“But anger is righteousness. It stems from our sense of justice, our ability to tell right from wrong. Think about it. The only times anger truly comes is when something is wrong. When we know the current state isn’t correct. Don’t you feel it? Don’t you want to repair the Galaxy?” Adara shifted her head to the side, feet beginning to trace a slow pace in a wary predator’s circle. Limbs which once had been as delicate as a damaged songbird lengthened in the intervening years. The once petite child was now an Epicanthix-proper height of six one, delicately framed even yet, but proper.
Proper for her species. For the Panathans.
“There are millions of Sith trained in the Empire every day. How many more in Confederacy space? How many Jetiise think their ‘ask questions later’ policies are truly grounded in the Light? The Dark Side is ubiquitous, ba’vodu.”
Her eyelids shifted, less open, a bit more discerning. “Do you know what the Zambranos do to slaves who displease them? The ones they are not merciful enough to kill. Tamar did the one unforgiveable thing, ba’vodu Mig. It wasn’t reaching above her station to be taken as a sister, that too can be forgiven. Yasha didn’t mean to harm the natural order. She loves Tamar. We all do. But what Tamar did was unforgivable. It incites rage like none can, for it combines both anger and passion, which are the two driving forces of any Sith. Any Dark Sider. Any truly loving individual. They take off the tops of their heads, Mig.”
Adara motioned to her own face, a bit of black fog concealing everything from the lips up. “They feed them an IV of drugs to keep them awake, make them feel it while they surgically remove their brains but for a bit of stem, implant on top a disc of metal, a computer to use their bodies like a droid. And they can feel it. Every second, they’re left with the consciousness to know what happened to them. Their limbs not their own, their minds plagued with pain, every order followed no matter. What. It is.”
She let the image linger, curiosity pouring into her as she watched the Mando’ad’jetii.
“Doesn’t that make you angry? Don’t you feel it? The sense of justice in your bones telling you how wrong that is? How terrible and dreadful a fate? Wouldn’t you do something to stop it? Dispassion, detachment is a Jedi tool, Mig Gred. It is masked as peace, but really is only the ability of a Jedi to have nothing left but their fellow Jedi and the Light. The fickle, adulterous light. It hoards you, closer and closer to nothing else bit it. The light, the constant desire to let go, detach. To stop feeling anger.
To forget your sense of justice. In the minds of the Zambranos, Tamar did the one unforgivable thing. She was bred, like cattle, to serve them and their family. Her children were bred, like livestock, to serve the House Zambrano. Generations of slaves were born and cross-bred to create the perfect wetnurse, the perfect warrior out of her sons. You’ve probably killed a few. I can find out if you have… but Tamar… she was ordered by Emperor Zambrano himself to deliver my mother, myself and my little brothers to him. To bring the family he wanted more desperately than land and kyber crystals home.
And she didn’t. She helped turn my mother away from him. Tamar kept a man from his family, Mig Gred. From the family he wanted to take for his own. And they will not stop. Not now, not when your twins are large, until their perceived evil is one day avenged. So I tell you now, if you will not use your sense of righteous justice, your anger to save the life of your wife. Your boys, then what will? All the Jedi ever teach is letting go.”
Mig Gred
