Private One, Here Comes the Two

[Liorra]

Liorra had stormed out of Oyubaat, and practically out of Keldabe.

She went where she always went to that rocky outcropping.

Manda help her, she wasn't sure she was doing this right. The new tattoos that had been inked on Yavin felt hot, burning hot. Kryze ancestors apparently not completely okay with her rushing out like that. Hot tears had already ran their course down Lio's face. Legs over the rocky ledge that let her look over the Mandalorian wasteland. She couldn't believe anything anymore, the woman she idolized, the rumors of her interacting with the Sith. The way that Ijaat had been so dismissive of Jenn Kryze and that tug in her own heart. The landslide of feelings once more Lio felt overwhelmed and all she wanted to do was crawl under every rock and just die. Confusion wasn't even the start of it, she just felt like she was drowning and with no way up to the surface. Maybe Elise Ahana-Gwyneira had it right, to leave and let it all go, and when Elise left Lio just thought that was a silly thing to do.

Now she was realizing maybe that was the brave thing to do.

Mia Monroe ​

 

[Mia Monroe]

Mia had tapped Kurayami Bloodborn 's shoulder on the way out of the Oyubaat, beckoning him with her. There had been something behind Lio's accusatory stare, something more than the words she had uttered. A dread settled heavily in her stomach as she ran a hand through her hair. She'd already lost Elise, and she could feel Lio slipping through her fingers. Cory had had it right, she was and always had been a terrible mother, she wasn't sure why she had thought that she could make up for the failures of a past life with these two.

"I know where she'll be." she told Kurayami, "Same place she always goes when she explodes."

Sure enough she found her on the rocky outcropping just outside the city and just like before, she settled herself down next to the girl.

"You want to tell me what that was all about?"

Kurayami Bloodborn Liorra

 

[Kurayami Bloodborn]

Kurayami looked up from his drink and the standard insanity provided by the Oyubaat as Mia Monroe tapped his shoulder and beckoned for him to follow her. Grabbing his helmet from the table, he followed the woman out of the establishment, thinking back on Lio's actions. It was clear to him that was why he was being brought outside, the words had been heavy enough that much was certain. The stare though...the venom in that stare was reserved for fallen heroes. It was one the Corellian was familiar with and had been on the receiving end of his fair share of times as well.

"You lead the way ma'am. I know how sensitive these things can be. For what little it's worth, I've had similar looks thrown at me...never gets easier. But when you remember that's your kid...well it helps ease the burn a bit I've been told. I dunno never had anyone consider me a father figure. I'll shut up now. Sorry." As usual, he was trying to show he empathized and understood to some degree, but his lack of social graces got him rambling yet again. At least he shut himself up this time before they reached the kid. The closer they got to the outcropping the more he could feel the tension rise. Once Mia had settled in next to Liorra Kurayami found a place nearby to take a seat and watch the two of them, the opening could maybe have used a bit of work, but that was a point for later.

"Hey Lio, we're just here to talk to ya. So come on give us insight, we want to know and help if we can."

 

[Liorra]

Lio sat in silence, even after Mia and Bloodborn had arrived. She wasn't sure what to say or how to say it, but she knew what she felt. Her heart was breaking into pieces. Lio had looked up to Mia; Mia was her hero. To finally piece together that Mia was working with a Sith Lord while allowing their Manda'lor to stick his head in the proverbial sand was devastating. If Ijaat cared about their people, he would have shown his face more.

He would have done more.

No, instead Mia had done all the work and allowed an old man to sit there and become so disconnected that he spat in the face of Lio's kin. Worse, Mia was so busy consorting with this Darth Malum. A Sith could never be trusted; they worked in absolutes, they were the extreme. There was no room for working with Sith. For Lio, the only good Sith was a dead one. Her emotions were still hot, even as she sat there looking out over the rocky outcrop.

Mia and Bloodborn asked her about her behavior. Lio had thrown her helmet to the ground and stomped out of the meeting. Ran out was more like it, and now the hot wind sliced through her clothes while dust was kicked up across the Mandalorian wastes. She answered plainly, "I know about Malum."

Then a beat later.

"You must be so busy with that Sith that you don't notice that Ijaat never leaves his forge, or that your so-called support is as useful as a heat rash." She was angry, but it had moved from a highly charged emotional state to an eerie calm, another reminder of her bloodline. "You let him insult my kin. You let him become so narrow-minded it contradicts your words."

"But I suppose that's what happens when you're busy consorting with Sith, rather than killing them." Lio punched below the belt. "I don't know why I thought you had changed. I've read the books they've written about you, the things you've done. I thought maybe this time you'd be different."

Lio shrugged. "But I guess not."

Kurayami Bloodborn | Mia Monroe ​

 

[Mia Monroe]

For a moment Mia said nothing, her jaw tightened, anger bubbling up from within her at Lio's words. She sounded so much like Siobhan, utterly incapable of seeing the wood for all the trees. There was no middle ground, there was no grey area. everything was black or white.

"How very hypocritical of you to call our Mand'alor narrow minded when you yourself have already made your mind up about something you think you know."

Her words were cold, her voice even despite her own anger.

"Tell me, Liorra, what is it that you know? What is it that you think I am?"

Liorra Kurayami Bloodborn

 

[Liorra]

"I know what I've read," Lio said coldly, not even looking at Mia. "You were practically a Sith. Then you destroyed Mandalore and died—a bit of an oversimplification..." Her voice trailed off, followed by a heavy sigh. "And here you are, aligning yourself with the darjetii."

"Did you not just hear him bark at my kin? He's narrow-minded. I thought all we needed to do was honor the Resol'nare and answer his call. So many people get caught up in their definition of being a Mandalorian that they neglect to just be a Mandalorian. The Manda accepts all who accept it. To turn another away is to spit on the Manda."

Lio shook her head. "And then there are the darjetii, who want nothing more than to take and take. They've taken enough, and you're willing to give them more."

"Nothing good comes from the darkness—only pain, suffering, and hate." She knew what the Jedi Code stated and what the Resol'nare stated. "But it seems to me no one here, especially your Manda'lor, seems to care." Lio's words had an extra bite that hadn't been there before.

Mia Monroe | Kurayami Bloodborn ​

 

[Kurayami Bloodborn]

Kurayami listened as the two of them traded jabs back and forth about history long past and more recent. What Liorra said about being a Mandalorian in his mind made far more sense that strict adherence to some figurehead, as much as he respected Ijaat and Mia Monroe and would follow either of them into battle should they call for him. What she said about the Resol'nare though seemed to contradict that if he was able to recall it correctly, there was something about the Mand'alor as part of the Six Tenets and following them when they called.

From what little he could recall it was not something he had done well, if at all according to many. There were parts of the Resol'nare he held to, but there were certainly parts he did not, and that alone would make him an outsider in the eyes of any traditionalist, yet on Yavin IV he had been pulled into the Manda and been approached by many elders from many ages. The entirety of the encounter was as a dream one tries to remember after waking and very fuzzy, but his body bore signs of the encounters in the form of tattoo-like scars that spiderwebbed over his torso from his time spent therein and none could deny it. Lio had been there with him as well. Once a silence had fallen once more he let it linger a few moments before reaching out to Lio through the Force, brushing his mind against hers a memory of the feeling of wandering through the Manda by her side.

"Lio, I do understand your pain at seeing someone you looked up to so highly fall short of the expectations you had. It's not an unnatural reaction to be disappointed, but this level of lashing out at someone for a perceived slight is unfair to them. Mia has been put into an unenviable position and with Ijaat calling us all here and then retiring to the forge and leaving Mia to pick up the pieces and do the heavy lifting, she has done a more than admirable job. I hate to break it to ya kid, but the galaxy is not a simple place, I used to think similarly as you when I was young, Light side good, Dark side bad, no in between.

And It wasn't until I was working with the Corellian Defense Force that I was soon absolved of those notions. I started to see that not everyone who worked for the 'bad guys' was doing it to be evil. Many of them were forced into it by circumstance, like providing food for their family because a mafioso controlled that sector. Government officials were on the mafia payroll and looking the other way, making sure that these people could not get out of their circumstances unless they tried less than legal or ethical means. Desperation brought many Sith to those areas as a means to bolster ranks, they would offer freedom to the downtrodden...but only if that person would kill for them. So tell me what would you do if you had no other option Lio? Take the chance to improve your situation or stay stuck in the status quo ad infinitum?

I know what the Code of the Jedi and Sith state well. I have studied both in depth, and I personally find both to be equivalently dangerous extremes. One promotes passivism and only necessary action, which sounds good in theory, but then there are always the masters who take the portion of 'necessary action' out. They corrupt it or forget it entirely. Corrupt it until it means that a Jedi strictly will not kill an unarmed opponent, no matter who they may be, or remove it to the detriment of taking action even when the time is right and would be most advantageous to help as many people as possible. Whereas the Sith code is the opposite. They will take actions simply to antagonize many times, and will go out of their way to brutalize an already beaten opponent, reveling in death by a thousand cuts so to speak. You need to find a path that is not fully dedicated to either ideal Liorra, learn to utilize the anger you feel and channel it to a productive end, not a destructive one like the Sith. Find what others view as a weakness or a flaw in you and instead turn it into a strength.

I ask only that you think on my words young, verda.

Again he would let silence settle over the three of them until either she or Mia spoke up, in all honesty, he had probably said far too much just now as he was wont to do.

 

[Mia Monroe]

Lio's words washed over her, each one of them delivered like a punch to the stomach. Mia held her gaze, her own sapphire orbs becoming icy as she studied the girl she had come to love as her own, as Kurayami spoke in her defence. She let the silence hang for a moment before speaking.

"Do you know what the history books leave out?" she began quietly "They leave out the truth that no one but my husband and Velok the Eldest knew. That my mind had been broken, that during an assault on Yavin Four, Velok used my mind as a data stick. I was in my 20s and had the knowledge and memories of a century old sith lord dumped into my mind. Do you know what its like, to try and pick through that? To distinguish the difference between what was me, and what was him? I was broken. And I broke everything else around me because of it. I murdered millions of my own kin on a whim that wasn't my own. So you're not wrong, I was practically a sith."

"When Ra rose to fight against me, I knew he was not himself, that he was not the same man I had followed into war against the Republic, and people only joined me to fight aganst him, because of his determination to eradicate the force within Mandalorians. He needed to die, and I failed to kill him and this..." she gestured to the wasteland that their outcropping overlooked, "this is the result."

"I will do anything and everything in my power to find a way to recompense for my failures. I will fight fire with fire and I will make deals in the shadows that secure our future and put an end to the war I have been fighting for hundred years against the sith. I was made by the darkness you are so sure is wrong. Suffering is all I have known and I will use the strength that it has given me, your black and white view of the galaxy will not change that."

Liorra Kurayami Bloodborn

 

[Liorra]

"Because it is!" Lio spat, her voice trembling with emotion. "Everything the darkness touches turns to ash, leaving nothing but pain and destruction. And yet here you are, willingly giving yourself to it." Her words were like venom, and though her heart ached, her conviction was unyielding. "This—this mess, this fractured world—is the result of complacency. Men and women playing gods, reaching for powers beyond their grasp. Their dark desires have shattered our world and fractured our people."

She glared at those around her, her eyes filled with tears of frustration and anger. "You still don't answer for the fact that you stood idle when Ijaat spat at my kin. You still don't explain why you let him do nothing but bask in his so-called rekindling, which amounted to nothing." Her voice rose in pitch and intensity, shaking with the fervor of her beliefs. "You fraternize with darkness, surround yourself with it. Go on, continue to bask in it. Revel in it. I will not."

With a defiant gesture, Lio tore off her vambraces and stripped off her beskar'gam, revealing the simple tunic and pants beneath. "I'm done," she declared, her voice cracking with a mix of sorrow and determination. "Elise was right. I thought she was a coward for leaving, but now I see she had the right idea."

Hot tears streamed down her face as she turned to Mia, her eyes blazing with a mix of betrayal and heartbreak. "She was right to leave." Then, shifting her gaze to Bloodborn, she gave a curt nod. "I appreciate your words, vod. They will be something to think on in the future. But I can't stay here."

Lio's voice softened but retained its steel edge. "I can't stay here while the Sith continue to poison this world, while the dark side is allowed to flourish unchecked." The irony of her own lineage, her own dark heritage, was lost on her in the heat of the moment. Her vision was black and white, her heart too bruised to see the shades of grey.

As she walked away, her steps echoed with the finality of her decision, the air heavy with unspoken truths and unresolved pain.

Mia Monroe | Kurayami Bloodborn ​