Private Drifting

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The cells beneath the imperial palace were the definition of melancholic. A thin layer of dust coated every surface, dozens of cells having been left unattended for the better part of a decade. There was a seeming dampness to everything, and the air was constantly heavy with humidity. The once pristine decorative floors had faded and grayed, the vibrant oranges and blues that had once added a bit of life to the dismal place having long since washed out.

Droids were all that walked these halls. They were ancient automatons, crafted long before the Gulag Plague had ever touched the galaxy. Just as his predecessors had elected to, the Imperator was keen on letting those droids continue their work undisturbed. The governance of a burgeoning galactic power was more than a little time consuming after all.

These cells were completely depopulated, save for one. Left with nothing but the droids to deliver food when required, Kiber Dorn had been utterly isolated. A week's time would pass with him locked away, and it was only the echo of footfalls down the hallway now that would break that monotony.

Clad in the dark robes of his station, Cedric Grayson strode up to the other side of the thin energy barrier that sealed Kiber off from the world.

"So," he breathed a quiet sigh. "You want to tell me your name?"

 

[Kiber Dorn]

He had been abandoned.

This wasn't the fun kind of abandonment to tell your therapist about twenty years down the line, in which it was found that all emotional problems stemmed from that time your dad went out for cigarettes and never came back.

No, a bit less deep than that, but a lot more instantly maddening.

Kiber Dorn had been huckled, and not by any force of law or ominous Sith patrol, but by two fearfully aggressive women in a party shop. His recollections of what happened were hazy, but such was to be expected in the face of the concussion he had received when the fox-eared girl had smashed him in the head with a plate.

The scab that had remained there was his only source of entertainment beyond his own thoughts as time passed in his imprisoned abyss, with no company bar ancient droids that kept him fed and offered relief from his various symptoms of withdrawal. Not to be dramatic, but had he been left to completely detox in here then he probably would have died. Still felt like shet though, even with the relief.

Despite the shet, there was a lot of constipation, mind you/

Did you know that opioids bung you up? Go to a shop in a rough area and you might notice that the laxatives are security tagged. Can't afford to buy those bad boy, gotta swipe 'em.

Time not spend sat upon the bog and picking scabs was instead given to increasingly fatalistic paths of thinking. Whose custody was he actually in? Was anybody actually coming back for him? Oh my Force, what if he was stuck somewhere in a vacuum of law and human rights? What if there was no trial and that this was the rest of his life? Would he be that raggedy eldery prisoner you see in all the holovids with a great long beard and a loose grip upon sanity?

Was torture at the hands of the Sith preferable? It wouldn't be so prolonged seeing as they lacked the creativity and patience for such. Painful though. Maybe this was better.

Thoughts bounced to and fro between the consideration of his fate and the weight of his crimes. The spice stuff was bad, don't get me wrong. Dealing isn't clean, it ruins lives and he got that but it was the best way to make credits. The spice-fuelled rampages were another story. He hadn't killed anybody, he wasn't that kind of guy. Yeah, a few assaults but well, everybody was okay right?

Barbara probably got her new crowd funded scooter and e-

FOOTSTEPS?

NOT A DROID? A PERSON? ROBES? OH NO.

Kiber peered up from his position upon the floor, with his knees still pulled up to his chest like a child caught in mid-sulk. He was one part excitement, in the fact that there was somebody to talk to and one part dread in that this somebody seemed no-nonsense and out for information.

“M-my name?” Kiber responded awkwardly, an entire textbook of used false identities suddenly scrolling through his brain at light speed, causing the man to hesitate in his given answer, “Uh...it's uh...ah....Parsley. T...Ta...McTavish.”

Super convincing.

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Cedric didn't need the Force to pick up on the prisoner's deception. One might have attributed it to the sudden tightening in the man's face muscles as he spoke, or the way in which he gave his chosen moniker. For Cedric it was just the name. Parsley T-ta-McTavish was just silly.

He regarded the addict for a few moments in silence, his visage one of unmoving stone. Eyes like pricks of flint appraised the man, and his lips pressed into a thin smile when he finally spoke. "Good to meet you Parsley." He offered, playing it straight for now.

The man was a danger, but not to Cedric. In an attempt to express his complete control over the situation, the Imperator waved a hand, and the conduits that kept the energy barrier sustained winked out.

"Let's go for a walk Parsley." His tone made it quite clear this wasn't a request. The Jedi turned to walk his way back the way he had come, head turned, and brow lofted as he waited to see if the man would comply.

Kiber Dorn

 

[Kiber Dorn]

His eyebrows practically leapt off of his forehead.

Is it though?

Reasonable response kept internal. One of them had been holed up in mind-numbing isolation for goodness knows how long, and the other probably had far better things he could have been doing with his time, namely not visiting pathetic junkies down in the cell. This was anything but good.

Terse perhaps, bordering on weird but not good.

Hey, at least he didn't question Kiber's panic-offered alias. It was hard enough to keep track on a good day, never mind after a week of solitary confinement. Colin Traff here. Greg'or Jambon there. Jacen Kak tomorrow. Parsley McTavish today. Or was it MacTavish? Didn't matter, as long as it was anything but Kiber Dorn.

The barrier between them was gone, the man assuming correctly that he was in little danger here. Kiber was known for a great many things, and being genuinely dangerous was not one of them. Irritating, however...

“...I mean, sure,” he replied, picking himself off the floor with the awkward grace of a leggy goose, “better not be taking me to the firing squaaaa....aaa...”

He hadn't really moved in a wee while and seemingly he'd seized up a tad as the man attempted to follow the straight-laced pair of robes back down the hallway.

“...aaam fine. Just a bit stiff,” Dorn continued, hobbling after the man as if he had just shet himself, this was rather unpleasant, “ooooh nooo. Still better not be a firing squad though.”

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Cedric's expression did not change as he observed Mister Parsley have what looked to be a standing seizure. If he really wanted to, he could have reached out into the depths of the empyrean to observe the man's anatomy and figure out what was going on, but Parsley didn't really strike him as the type to be worth that much effort.

Probably just a cramp anyway.

"Not the firing squad." He replied simply, "The electric chair. We're humane here in the Imperium." Cedric added matter-of-factly. He would lead Kiber up a stairwell that led to the lower levels of imperial palace. The dampness gave way to crisp air, and the smell was replaced by some kind of cheap fruity air freshener. Cedric didn't really keep up with what the help did to the place.

"Do you want your body donated to science, or would you prefer we feed it to the Anari?" A thin smile was cracked.

Kiber Dorn

 

[Kiber Dorn]

Wait, nobody said anything about climbing stairs, I didn't agree to this. This is an outrage! A known war crime! Oh the humani-

The electric chair?

He was having a mild goof about the firing squad, after all, his crimes may have been numerous and spread across the galaxy on a slew of differing identities but it was never evil. Okay, the spice thing was a little evil but he didn't target kids or anything, just fellow adults capable of making their own terrible decision.

As his shrivelled lungs protested at the torment of cardio, his panicked brain cycled through his options. First was the most simple. Just run and hide. It was the default. He was good at running (maybe not physically) but having evaded legal and personal consequence for so long Kiber was allowed to toot his own horn about his evasion abilities.

The second option was to soil himself. Not too proud for that, and you'd be surprised at how many people didn't want to touch you after such a noble tactic.

Last but not least, option three. The art of conversation.

“...you're....kidding, right,” Dorn puffed as he struggled with the stairs, unsure if the man's smile indicated some sort of jape or if he had some kind of justice-induced hard-on, “...for starters...I don't...don't think the...chair...is actually...that humane. Have you....considered the....merits...of...lethal...injection...”

Wait, this is the wrong concern.

“...and...secondly...”

Oh Force, I'm so unfit. Why stairs?!

“...how about...no...execution...at all?”

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It brought Cedric no small amount of pleasure to see that his tormenting was being taken seriously. He wasn't a bad man, or at least he didn't think he was, but Cedric gained a profound amusement in the trolling of others. He did not reply as they crossed up the stairs, keeping his gaze pointed forward so that Kiber couldn't see the slight smirk on his face.

"Yeah I'm just karking with you," he finally spoke as they made their way into a small chamber that looked to be an expanded storage closet. The Jedi turned to face his prisoner, a brow lofted. "We don't do capital punishment here. At least not for people that haven't done anything afford it," he assured. "I'm Cedric," he offered a hand, his gaze never leaving Kiber's.

"Now that we're both done pretending, can you tell me your real name?"

Kiber Dorn

 

[Kiber Dorn]

Oh, thank the Gods!

His relief was twofold, firstly having finally conquered the stairs and secondly finding out that he was not going to be executed. Kiber might have actively celebrated this were he not so pathetically winded by the powers of moderate cardio.

“Jeeze...you...had...me....goin'...there,” the miscreant panted, awkwardly grasping the offered hand with both of his own like some kind of blind, mystic beggar woman.

Oh, the jig is up? Who would ever have guessed that Parsley MacTavish was a fake name? Oh right, like everybody on their dog.

“Dang, that....obvious?”

He squinted at this Cedric as he considered giving him his real name. It wasn't really a big deal, it wasn't a well-known name, nor was he a well-known individual. The issue at hand was that the man that wanted him dead was well-known and who knew what individual connections that cape-wearing monster had. He was the Emperor, after all.

Why are they going into a closet?

“I'm...uh...I'm Kiber, alrite? Kiber Dorn.”

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Cedric lofted a brow at the two-handed headshake, but thought little more of it. He was just happy to get the deceptions out of the way. He'd never had much heart for them.

"Good to meet you, Kiber." He offered the man a warm smile. It was half-strategic - Cedric knew well of the Dorns. They, like the Graysons, had stood against the Zambranos and paid dearly for it. If this one was truly one of theirs, then Cedric could allow himself a kinship with him. "And yes, very obvious. Might want to try something simpler. Mark Skypork, or something like that," he gave a light shrug as he would lead Kiber out of the storage room into a rather long hall that was decorated about as ornately as a hallway could be.

It was all holdover from the old High Chancellor of the CIC: gold statues, ancient paintings, and a big red rug that spanned the entire length of the hall. Cedric's arms folded behind his back as he began to walk, expecting Kiber to follow.

"Are you one of the Dorns?" He asked, curiosity getting the better of him. "The family the Zambranos tried to put to the torch?"

Kiber Dorn

 

[Kiber Dorn]

Mark Skypork?

Kiber made a face as if he had just been forced to eat his vegetables, clearly not in approval of Cedric's own invented alias. I mean, what kind of a name was Mark? Absolutely ridiculous!

He might have passed comment on it were it not for the mad layout of this place. One second abandoned prison, next second a storage room and now sheer opulence. Having an eye for the artistry of intoxication, Kiber could have only assumed that whoever designed this place was out of their Force-damned minds.

“Uh...”

Shet, that was a question and a half.

“There's nothin' the about Dorns, man,” Kiber responded with a moderate amount of bitterness, still following on having managed to regain his breath somewhat, “buncha' dead no-nothing posturing arseholes.”

Tell us how you really feel.

“You can't pet a vornskr and then be surprised when it eats your face.”

He paused, patting down his pockets to see if he still had his smokes on him, but then remembered that his smokes had been lost alongside his original pair of trousers. Ugh, just the worst. Eyebrows waggled in moderate annoyance as his fingers twitched, wishing to hold precious nicotine.

“Why'd you wanna know?”

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