All There Is.

[Alkor Centaris]

Continued from Here.

He read her body language and could tell something was amiss. It was all too familiar, and yet, she proclaimed that she was fine. That she was not going to concede. For Alkor, that was enough. He would not press the issue, even if he thought better of it. It was her next question that took him by surprise.

What did he believe? Did he truly think that this life was all there was, or that there was nothing better? Not quite- actually, it was the first thing she said that honestly missed its mark. It was the first time he had chosen for himself. It was the first time he had ever been allowed.

He placed his drink down on the table and shook his head. "No," Alkor shook his head slightly. "I'm fully aware there are other things I could do, or choices I could have made."

Her expression was almost too soft, a stark contrast from her usual amused, wry look. She seemed relaxed, which also took him by surprise. [member="Naedira Darcrath"] was nothing if not vigilant. Her guard was nowhere to be seen, and he did not know what to think of this sudden vulnerability.

Whenever he felt that way, it made him frantic. Uncomfortable, like a caged animal. "I became a Knight because I made a conscious decision to try and become something different from what circumstance had made me. I want to be more than..."

...the monster everyone thinks I am.

He stopped before finishing the sentence. He had never cared what anyone else thought. Why, now, was that a question? Was it that they believed he was a monster, or that he was starting to believe it himself? "Why did you become a Knight?"

 

[Naedira Darcrath]

Centaris didn't drink. Interesting.

Her eyes were soft, doe-like, whilst he spoke. They weren't filled with the innocence of a youngling but there was an edge of understanding that might not have otherwise been there. "I'm glad.", she murmured, bringing her drink to her lips, so that she could imbibe regardless the game dictating it or not. It wasn't that his answer bothered her. None of them had. It was part of his life. Part of him. With that in mind, what and who her partner was, couldn't unnerve her. He was loyal to his brother and dutiful to a fault. The truth of his past wouldn't change that.

She listened to why he had become a Knight, and though he trailed off, he didn't need to say the rest. It would be clear in her expression that she knew. Intoxicated or not[SIZE=11pt]—Naedira was not that thick. Her lips curved almost fondly, and she took another sip, before murmuring. "I'm glad for that too..." [/SIZE]

If he hadn't chosen what he had, she could have been stuck with someone else, or even, found herself banished to a backwater world. Necessity, skill, and her keen eye for new talent, diamonds in the rough, kept her valuable to the former Dominus Prime. Centaris asked why she had become a Knight and she gave him another open smile before she reached up to tuck wayward strands of hair behind her ear. "It let's me do what I'm good at."

"I tried everything on Naboo. I was terrible at being a noble and a politician. There was too much red tape."

That was the truth. The woman she had turned into, versus what she had been raised to be, were two very different things. She'd grown up in long silken dresses with dance and music lessons that stretched on as far as the eye could see. After she became widowed, her everything changed, and the Force became a factor. She learned. Her father was Sith. "Something happened. I founds out I was force sensitive and I took to it like a fish to water. I never fit in with anything else. We have autonomy in the Knights. We can use our gifts....Life is simple."

"I like simple. Clear rules, straight lines."

She was a little too piqued to realize that she hadn't asked him another question.

[member="Alkor Centaris"]

 

[Alkor Centaris]

Alkor took a sip of his whiskey unbidden, watching the woman carefully as she spoke. There had been no question, and yet, there were so many unanswered questions between them. Why did she care to learn more about him? What spurred her to such levels of tenacity, to a point where she drank herself into a stupor? He looked over the rim of the glass as he drained it, then placed it down between them.

"I've never thought of the Force as a gift," he told her. "I've never wanted to have it. From the moment I learned I was sensitive to it, I haven't slept a decent night through. Nightmares about the things I've seen, that I've done haunt me. Memories of things I try to forget scream in my ears. I see the world on fire, and wonder sometimes if it's real or not."

Alkor sat back, and as the Droid refilled his glass, he locked eyes with Naedira. "I was a killer before I was anything else. I never needed power to be good at taking life." He folded his hands in his lap, and he left the drink on the table. "I think people in this Galaxy have a way of trying to fit into molds. There are so many things you could be, so many things you want to be, and so many things you don't.

But there are only a handful of things we ever actually are, and we're all so good at rejecting those in favor of things we won't ever be."

He said nothing more for a moment as he waited for his words to sink in, then reached for the glass again. "The only rule in this Galaxy that matters," he explained, "is not to be weak. The strong climb to the top on the broken backs of the weak. That was what I learned."

[member="Naedira Darcrath"]

 

[Naedira Darcrath]

Naedira laughed. It was a light sound, slow, from the liquor but still incredibly feminine. He kept watching her like a youngling might watch a live cobra. Did he think she was going to attack? Bite? It amused her even more that he had taken the word “gift” as a compliment when used to describe the Force. Very few people that she’d met, especially Knights, viewed the mystical invisible presence which bound them all as something to be held in a positive light. It was, simply, what it was. “You misunderstood…”

“In saying gift—I was only being polite. The Force makes me a Knight. I’m good, at that. It’s a tool that I can’t escape…So here I am.”

He explained his views on it and she let him. Some of it she read as former Mandalorian paranoia, but the rest, seemed to be have gleaned from experience. “The things we do…It should haunt you.”

If it didn’t haunt him, bother him at all, even in the dead of night—She would have wondered about him even more than she already did. He saw a world on fire, which, generally wasn’t wrong. With the constant state of conflict, the galaxy was going through? A planet was always burning somewhere. Her head tilted slowly, while she looked Centaris over, trying to put the pieces together.

“Do you think it’s only you?”

She brought her drink up and took a slow sip before carefully, daintily, draining the glass. “Do you think that the Jedi, even with their open humility, don’t see monstrous things at night? The difference between those groups is that we don’t or shouldn’t accept that what will be, will be. What we do matters. People who sleep well at night that can see and do what we’ve seen and done…”

“Shouldn’t.”

He admitted to being a killer, to being good at it, long before the Force crept in. Naedira shook her head. “Not everyone is like you. I didn’t know…Anything, as a girl. Not a thing. I tried to fit into the role that was expected of me. I failed. This, regardless anything else, is where I belong.”

She couldn’t disagree with the last part. Yes. The strong stood tall. Often, it was up to the strong to take care of the weak or they had nothing to stand on. It was a cycle of give and take. “Our system is flawed, broken, because we depend on the existence of the weak to be considered strong. I already told you…I was weak. I was small, scared, and alone. At least I thought I was. Until being strong was the only choice I had.”

Naedira leaned back in the chair and let her right leg cross neatly over her left, while she smoothed the hem of her skirt, and tried to distance her mind from the past. A droid came to fill her whiskey and the young woman paused in picking it up. How much had they had again?

Oh, the game. She'd almost forgotten.

“You’ve never been in love.”

[member="Alkor Centaris"]

 

[Alkor Centaris]

"If Jedi experience anything other than a delusion sense of morality, I have yet to experience it." His flat answer fully discounted an entire sect of Force Adepts, and among the Confederacy's closest allies; still, Alkor made no attempt to hide his disapproval. "You ever heard of the planet Palawa?" he asked her sardonically. Even if she had, he snorted. "Even if you have, you haven't seen it. You can thank the Jedi sleeping soundly after they blew it to pieces for that."

He sat back and watched her as she spoke, tracing the rim of his glass idly with his forefinger. "You want to be strong?" he asked skeptically. "You feel you had no other choice? The weak in this Galaxy live the most comfortably never knowing anything more than their everyday lives. They have little responsibility, and they are better for it. Strength is a burden, Knight Darcrath."

He pushed the drink slowly away and matched her gaze. "It is the duty of the strong to ensure that the weak never have to worry or to want. Whether that means culling them or guiding them like a flock, these things decide what type of people History will remember us as.

But that doesn't mean you have to take on that responsibility, or even that doing so has fundamentally changed your nature." Predator, and Prey. You could tell by looking at a man which he was. [member="Naedira Darcrath"] had challenged him to something more than a drinking game, it sounded like.

But she had let down her guard, and killers could smell weakness.

Apparently, sometimes, Prey could smell things of their own. He stared at her in silence. He heard the words, he considered them, and he reached out.

The drink emptied down his throat.

"No," he said drilly. "I have not."

[member="Naedira Darcrath"]

 

[Naedira Darcrath]

“Just because you haven’t experienced it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

The auburn-haired woman was a little less than sober and couldn’t quite follow up on the commentary without crossing her arms, petulant, as if she were a poet of philosophy. She had a very different view on the galaxy and everything that existed within it. The Jedi weren’t her favorite group to deal with, but, they did have their uses. A true Knight didn’t waste resources. No matter what form they arrived in. “You enjoy generalizing. Not every Jedi would sleep soundly. After that—They shouldn’t.”

No matter how much of the Dark Side she took in she would always feel something for the nigh evil things she used it to do. Her head tilted while her took her words, turning them, so that they no longer meant what she had initially intended. Did he deliberately misunderstand her? Or did he simply choose to? “I wanted to be, then. Now, I am.”

“Strength may be a burden—But it is mine to bear. I’d rather have a broken back from carrying on than to hide in fear.”

There was something about Centaris that managed to get under her skin. Perhaps, it was the whiskey clouding her judgement. Or—It was providing clarity. His very nature seemed designed to strangle those around him, while at the same time, providing an obsessive puzzle to solve. She didn’t fear him. Centaris was scary, even in the dead of night, but she had faced worse. “I choose to take the responsibility. I choose to fight. I choose to be who I am, no matter who disapproves, or what I have to do. Opinion and rhetoric mean nothing.”

Predator and prey. Did he really think he was the only one in the room with teeth and claws? Her guard may have slipped due to the drink, however, she wasn’t so damaged beneath the surface that a little dialogue shook her to the core. Centaris was a monster. She’d known that sober. The only thing that separated him from a Leviathan of the deep or a Hydra was the fact that he had critical thinking skills. He could torture, as they did not, because only men truly killed for no reason. Animals did not.

The abrupt subject change seemed to stunt the previous discussion. As she had expected, he drank, and she watched him for a long moment. The room was starting to blur around the edges and her cheeks felt like they had little pinpricks of fire running across them.

Again, he didn’t ask his own question.

“Don’t you ever wonder?”

Love. A silly, insipid emotion, that could build empires or tear them down. Wasn’t he the least bit curious? Likely not. Nothing in his nature had ever given her that opinion…But, still, she asked. Understanding what made Centaris tick was…Important. She didn’t know why.

It just was.

[member="Alkor Centaris"]

 

[Alkor Centaris]

"You weren't there on Mirial. I saw what happened. I saw how Jedi deal with problems." It was nice to talk about semantics and the Jedi way, to tout them as implacable defenders of life and balance, but throughout the course of his life, Jedi had only ever given him more doubt. Doubt about their words and about their integrity. He dropped the glass onto the table and sat back. "To generalize would infer I haven't come to that conclusion through careful analysis and observation. I'd tell you to ask those people themselves, but a Jedi literally burned them from existence."

Alkor did not move, nor did his eyes move from [member="Naedira Darcrath"] as she continued to speak. Bearing in mind that the alcohol moved through her in ways that had been lost to him, he checked his sudden violent urge. It was easier to release that sort of thing, and yet, cold rage that was left to fester like an open wound was far more dangerous.

It seethed beneath his skin and boiled in his veins, and yet he remained calm. He was a hurricane trapped in a human body. "You have a choice," he reiterated. "You could have stayed frail, ignorant, and weak. You did not have to take this life. You talk about this responsibility like you fully grasp what you're sacrificing, but then you turn and ask me-"

Alkor exhaled, closing his eyes. No. She did not, could not, and would not ever understand. Even with his words finalized, it was apparent. "You ask me about love, and if I've ever wondered. No, Knight Darcrath. That, above all else, is my point. People like me do not have such luxuries. We give up things like happiness, comfort, companionship, and love, so that others may have those things freely."

He did not reach for his drink this time. If her idea of victory was in lost sobriety, she had already won. "You had a choice. You still have one. I never did. I have never felt those things. To give something up, you have to understand what you have lost. That makes me the perfect tool."

He stood. "I think I'll retire. You shouldn't get up quickly."

 

[Naedira Darcrath]

[member="Alkor Centaris"]

Naedira watched as Centaris rationalized his blind judgement. Was he trying to convince her of things she already knew? Or was he simply looking for a reason to contend every word she spoke? She couldn't tell. It was as if her every point, valid or otherwise, suddenly seemed cause fire and brimstone to pour from his lungs. No. It was true. Naedira had not been present for the devastation that was Mirial but she had dealt with the aftermath. There had been countless words that had suffered similar fates. From the hands of the Jedi, Sith, and everything else in-between. "..And Sith kill indiscriminately just as easily. I've never raised the Jedi above our kind, or, classified them as saintly. There are simply areas of gray to be observed. It is the nature of sentient beings to fight. As long as one group has something the other wants, an ideal, a thought...Nothing is safe. Nothing is sacred. You seem to think I'm ignorant just because my experience does not meet your exact specifications..."

"...But that doesn't mean that I haven't seen other worlds die. Don't patronize me. We are different. That doesn't mean that I don't know the truth."

The truth—That war, needless, bloody and cruel...Would never end. Not as long as there was still a grain of sand left to fight over.

Her partner may have suppressed any outward expression of his anger but it wouldn't help when the Force whispered little tales of the gale that raged against his insides. Topaz eyes slipped over his form while more words than she'd ever heard from him tumbled from his lips like a waterfall. His voice was rough. It gave no room for quarter, for understanding, and almost reminded her of blind zealotry. When he finished, coming to stand, the young woman seemed to have lost her vigor for the whiskey that sat before her. Her words came slow. Steady, soft, but slow. "...You don't know me as well as you think you do. You believe you were made for this, a tool, that never had a chance..."

"Why do you fight so hard against the path I've chosen to follow? Why is it suitable for you—And not for me?"

The trauma in her life had come later. She had edges that were still sharp, experiences, that had all but soured the memories of her youth. She knew what it was like to have what she desired. She knew what it was like to lose it. To have it taken, smothered, and buried. He spoke of love, of a subject he knew nothing of, and her eyes closed for a moment. He couldn't give up something he'd never had. There was no sacrifice in relinquishing something that had never belonged to him in the first place.

He would fight, start a war, and bandy about sharp words with her tonight while tried to push her away from...What? This life? This decision? Why did he keep insisting that she "still" had a choice? Was there something he didn't want her to become?

Perhaps, he was simply pushing her away from becoming the monster they both knew could be. Clearly, she'd struck a nerve. "You do that, Alkor."

It also didn't give him the right to continue to tell her what to do. She stood regardless, and to her credit, only the color drained from her face when the room started to tilt. Her hand remained on the back of the chair while she fought to maintain equilibrium. Naedira had no desire to lock herself in a small room. Rather, she would prefer fresh air. Anything to lessen the heat from the whiskey that made her feel like she ought to take a swing at him. That irritation alone kept her standing. Emotion. It was as the old adage said...

Through passion, I gain strength​

It was right about then that she realized, through her own stupor, that the Knight hadn't gotten drunk at all. He moved easily...Without a single stumble.

Her eyes went flat. He wasn't drunk at all.

 

[Alkor Centaris]

He took a long breath as he pushed out of the longue and up onto the topdeck. The sticky sweet smell of spice lifted and his disdain for the drug washed away. He could taste the fresh, crisp air as it washed over his face and stole away with any last vestiges of warmth the whiskey had bestowed. There were things he could say, things he could even scream, but his own beliefs were- at the end of the day- his own beliefs.

He hated Sith perhaps as much as he did Jedi. There were exceptions to every rule. The Vicelord himself, Alkor's own Brother, was one of the greatest of those. He would throw himself into the line of fire to preserve that man's vision. By his own choice, mind. He had made that distinction.

Anything he did now, in life, he would do of his own volition. Down the the Oath of Knighthood he had taken under the eyes of Cardinal and then Elessar. That was perhaps why he disliked the idea of Naedira choosing the path for herself after talking about becoming strong.

She wasn't born into poverty, nor had she struggled to simply survive. She had lost something precious, and the world around her turned cold. Two paths to the same end. Both of them had found cold. The difference was, she had known warmth. He stared now into the mountains beneath the ship and tightened his grip on the railing.

She knew there was something she could go back to, and she chose not to.

She was right. Alkor did not understand her. It was possible that he might never. That was true of most people for him. He was a brand of warrior, a kind of monster that the Galaxy had put aside any need for. Strides in Droid technology and styles of warfare had cast aside champions in favor of sheer numbers, and men like the Corellian Exile had faded into obscurity.

Yet here he was, serving now as a Knight. A Protector, not a Destroyer. Divine Comedy.

[member="Naedira Darcrath"]