Parcae

[Vansen Tyree]

Rings? Rings of what?

Vansen wasn't entirely sure why Lorien was looking at him, as if he were somehow an expert on the cuisine in this sort of establishment. The last time he'd found himself in a bar like this sincerely looking for food, there'd still been a Supreme Chancellor, and he'd still had enough binocular depth perception to snack on the contents of a bowl without needing to concentrate on it too hard. Since the Empire onwards, most of his social drinking had happened at the nearest Officers' Mess, and as best he could remember, they didn't even have a fryer, let alone the capacity to serve up plates of fried goods on a whim.

He tried to fathom what Lorien might order in this situation. The meat in those nuna wings was probably preferable, right? It occurred to him that he'd never really paid all that much attention to his Lupine friend's dietary requirements. He was a little ashamed of that, now he thought about it, and wondered how much else about Lorien he simply didn't know, didn't remember, or hadn't paid attention to.

"Some of each," he replied with a slight shrug, tugging his transaction card out of his pocket and handing it across to the Iridonian. "And bring the rest of the bottle along with that bourbon."

His gaze turned back to Lorien, his shrug repeated with more emphasis this time. "If we don't finish it, it's just more for the drawer in my desk."

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

"A pragmatist," came her low-voiced assessment.

Toying with the coaster, s'Il gave a look at him from over the tops of her eyes, a mismatched gaze that mirrored his own. Though, she supposed that she got the better end of the deal in the grand scheme of things. Without access to any adequate medical facilities, there'd been no move to completely remove her eye; instead, the medics who attached themselves to the Rebellion in those early days had left it in. Though, perhaps it was for the better. It had quasi-healed in a strange way, owing to her biology, and she could still 'see' through it in a fashion, though it was only through the Force. It gave her a strange pseudo-sense of depth perception, even if it took a fair enough amount of time to adjust to. If it had been removed, and an eyepatch fitted in its' place, she wasn't sure how her body would've reacted.

"There are some days," she started slowly, choosing her words carefully as she leaned back in her seat. A hand came up to undo the top clasp of her own uniform jacket.

"... that I wonder how so much time passed since the Clone Wars. I wonder how the years escaped me so quickly."

[Vansen Tyree]

Vansen let out a small, humourless breath of laughter.

"I was aware of every day that passed between then and now," he countered, a quiet roughness grating at the edge of his voice. He didn't meet Lorien's gaze; didn't feel worthy of it. "What plagues me is how it took me so long to come to my senses. I knew what the Empire was right from the start, but I was too wrapped up in victory, then duty, then obligation to see it. Not until Alderaan. Not until the end of the Senate. Not until -"

His voice trailed off. There was one name in particular that wielded the biggest hammer of guilt; that hit him the hardest in moments such as this. Anpher Inirial. His mentor. His friend. His Captain, when Lorien had first known him. Vaporised along with his family like all the rest of Alderaan, save for a handful of debris fragments like Adonis and Carré. It had taken that act, that impact, to finally drive him from Imperial service. But not to the Rebellion. Oh, no: instead it had driven him into retirement. The Force and his enemies had conspired to punish him for that: the cost of an eye for what he had failed to see.

It had not been until after Endor, not until the Alliance's losses had made them truly desperate that Vansen took up arms. "I'm not sure why I'm here," the train of thought continued aloud, his gaze finally finding the Jedi. "Am I really here to help save the galaxy, or is this all just the futile efforts of an old man trying too late to make amends for what he should have done a long time ago?"

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

She watched him, watched his facial triggers and ticks as he spoke.

"We are here... "

What exactly could she say to that? Vansen Tyree had the infuriating ability to stump her on many things, but perhaps it was for the better. It drove her to look deeper and further into things that she would've never given a second thought to. Zem challenged her as well, pushing her and drawing out the carefully guarded emotions that she so often kept under lock and key.

But Vansen had truly been the first to tear away the exterior she'd put forward. So long ago, he had been the one to show her that there was so much more to life. Even despite his particular delight in retelling the story of her disastrous Y-Wing sortie, she still saw him in a light that very few others did. And even though he put forth just the same hardened shell that she herself did, she was more than aware of what was beneath; just as he was equally knowledgeable of her own inner workings.

Finally, she went on.

"All of us - you and I - everyone; we're here because we have to be."

She offered a faint smile. It tugged rebelliously at the corners of her lips, and as the server returned with two glasses and the bottle of bourbon, she nodded in thanks.

"Who else could do what we do?"

[Vansen Tyree]

Another humourless laugh.

"Of course," he muttered, his voice laced with cynicism. "Who else could sit in a meeting room all day, listening to politicians bicker about the petty minutiae of matters that don't -"

He trailed off into a sigh, reaching for his glass and gazing doen at it idly, fingers slowly rotating it back and forth. Perhaps this was why he was still here, still enduring: enough alcohol in his blood stream to keep him pickled and preserved. If what he did was so vital, if the things only he could do were so essential to the Alliance, thenwhy was he here? Why was he wrapped inside an Admiral's uniform, trappedbehind a desk, doing everything but what Lorien suggested was his exclusive capability? Anyone could be a tedious bureaucrat - so why did he need to be?

He knew the answer that the brass had given. He'd commanded the Liberation of Bothawui, so the Bothans trusted him. He'd commanded the Wheel, and presided over Rogue Squadron, so the military trusted him. He'd served with the Republic, so the old guard and the traditionalists trusted him. He had a distinguished Imperial career, one that he hadn't defected from; so the Imperial worlds trusted him too, to a point. He was old, too; something many of the Alliance races associated with wisdom and leadership; a far better option than some of the younger leaders who'd made a name for themselves in the Galactic Civil War. He was a confluence of conveniences. The Alliance had needed an Admiral to defend the capital, and Vansen Tyree was the best option to piss off as few people as possible.

Ironic really: Vansen had made a career out of bring respected, but not necessarily liked; now his twilight years disrespected his service and skills in the interests of popularity.

He raised the glass to his lips, mumbling the completion of his sentiment before he drank.

"- matter."

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

She listened quietly, lifting her own glass and taking off a small level as his words filled the air around them. He sounded... defeated? It was so unlike the man she had known in her youth, and to many degrees she was sure that her demeanor now was a sharp contrast to what she herself had once been, but still. Hope sprang eternal, as Zem had so often said to her. And the tinges of his emotions swam around him like hungry amano-sharks, circling in an ever-familiar predatory fashion.

"- matter."

She heard the word, watching him sip from his own drink. He returned the glass once more to its' coaster.

It was as he looked back up to meet her eye that she leaned forward, over the table. An arm snaked out, delivering a hard-but-not-really-hard open-palmed slap to the side of his face. He needed to wake up. To stop wallowing in his self-pity. She had been in his same circumstances as well, despondent at the things she'd done as Darth Acera. As the half-being of Loklorien s'Ilancy. She had been a creature of evil and hate. Of ambition and rage. It had been a difficult thing to come to grips with. How did one reconcile with the fact that they had killed children?

"Pull yourself together, Van-droid," came the quiet order as she once again retreated to her side of the table. Her use of the name that Captain Inirial had once introduced him as was deliberate.

[Vansen Tyree]

The expression in Vansen's eye began as startled, but quickly morphed into anger; and then to something else. He wasn't sure what he'd been looking for, or hoping for - a little Jedi reassurance or wisdom maybe - but he wasn't going to get it. Not from Loklorien s'Ilancy. For all their similarities, for all the ways that the decades had made them more and more the same, they were still two very different people. Since the very beginning, Lorien had been the one without strings, the one whose Jedi authority made her subject to no one but her Jedi masters all the way back on Coruscant. Vansen had always been the one shackled by duty, by regulations, by the uniform.

Even now, three decades on, Vansen's obligations held him back; while s'Ilancy was mostly free to act. She had been twisted, manipulated, corrupted in ways that Vansen could not even begin to imagine; but at least any guilt or regret she felt was over things she had done, and things she had suffered. Vsnden's guilt wasn't even for things he hadn't done: it was for things he couldn't have done. How much different would things have been if he'd ben able to act, to intervene sooner and in a more meaningful way? What could he have thwarted? What could he have saved and spared Lorien from?

Those same shackles even withheld him from fully indulging his grief. It was unbecoming of a man of his station. Even his oldest friend wasn't prepared to indulge him.

He drained his glass in a single motion, reaching for the bottle to recharge another. His gaze fell away from her completely, a rough defensive edge grating away at the edge of his voice. "Don't do that again," he grunted, throwing another mouthful down his throat.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

"Or what," she stared him down, despite his unwillingness to meet her gaze, "... you'll discipline me? Motion for a court martial?"

There was a pause before she went on, consumed by the act of another drink from her bourbon.

"Vansen Tyree, We've been around the block enough times. I've seen you at your most vulnerable, and you have likewise seen me in the very same light."

No more were they Alliance officers. No more were they the Republic naval officer and Jedi. No more were they anything but what they were meant to be. They existed now, here, in a vacuum that so few times they had found themselves existing within. And in that moment, he looked exactly as he had the very first time that they'd met. That same spark she'd come to know so well in both of his eyes still radiated from the one he had left. She only hoped that he saw the same in hers.

One hand reached out then, palm up and inviting.

"I'm your friend before all else. Allow me that much, at least."

[Vansen Tyree]

"And what?" he countered, his razor-edged voice becoming a growl. "As my friend, you think you're just gonna knock some sense into me, and all will be well?"

Balanced against the edge of the table, Vansen felt the laminated faux wood begin to dig into his wrists, even as the tendons tensed, gnarled skin tightening across his knuckles as his hands clenched themselves into fists. His eye found hers, a black hole of repressed and hidden emotion swirling behind it, transcended beyond sorrow, self loathing, and self pity into simple surrendered despair. Countless wars, countless battles, so much loss and destruction witnessed across his long life, and only now did Vansen seem as if he had finally been defeated; as if his will had finally been broken.

"I am old, Lorien. There's no Force magic or Lupine DNA flowing through my veins to keep me going. My body is failing, a little more each day; there's a whole lot of years behind me, and they are finally catching up. I have dedicated my life to the military; to the service. Every choice I ever made, I chose the uniform. Everything I was, everything that defined who I am for all these years; they're memories. They're a man I can never be again."

His jaw clenched, muscles tending visibly as he fought out more words.

"What do I have to show for that? What reward do I have for all that sacrifice? Admiral stars, and a desk. Aches and scars. A wasted life. An empty legacy. An empty heart. All I am is a handful of sand, Lorien; and as soon as the galaxy loosens it's grip on me, there'll be no fading into the Force, no continuation of the family name, no cause for any but the handful who outlive me to remember who I am or what I have done."

"Dust on the wind." Those solemn words were rewarded with another drink. "That's all I'll be."

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

She stared at him, taking in each word he spoke. Was she hoping for more? Perhaps. But, on the other side of that credit chit, perhaps not.

He'd always been no-nonsense, and brutally honest. What could possibly make him any different now?

s'Il let out a long breath, her lips closing in a tight line as she finally turned away. Now it was she who could not meet his gaze.

"That's all you will be," she finally countered, "... unless your will decides otherwise."

[Vansen Tyree]

His will.

He nodded, more in acknowledgement of her expected response than anything resembling agreement. Trust a Jedi to say something like that. It was all well and good when your will had the ultimate power in the universe at it's beck and call, pumping you full of vitality and renewed strength. He'd seen what General Yoda had done with it, back in the Clone Wars: so frail and hunched, literal centuries of life weighing down on him, except for when the Force flowed through him. Vansen would give just about anything for a little fraction of that about now; the capacity to toss his aged bones aside and start cartwheeling across enemy troop formations like a hyperactive Gungan. But it didn't work that way for mere mortals. Folks like him had to struggle around with their weary muscles and missing eyes without the Force there to help prop them up and compensate.

"My will -"

It was a mirthless chuckle that tumbled out this time, a smile and a shaking head at the absurdity of it all. Mind over matter. Force of will. Sentimental, spiritual nonsense. It didn't make a damned difference; not to someone like him. He trusted in tangibles. He trusted in what had earned that trust. He trusted in the tried and tested technology of his starships. He trusted in the dependable, battle-hardened resilience of his crew. He used to trust in his superiors, in their motives and their strategies; but lately that had begun to waver, now that he'd witnessed the way things looked once you got up close.

"- is tired, Lorien."

He downed the last of another drink, letting the glass loiter in the air in front of him, watching as the residual drips clung to the inner surface, twisting the light that shone through them. He contemplated another, but even the will for that had gone; a sudden outrushing of anger like atmosphere through a hull breach, leaving nothing but airless, empty silence in it's wake. The glass inverted, placed rim down against the table.

"Just like the rest of me."

As Vansen rose to his feet, he couldn't have looked older if he'd tried. His bones creaked with every motion, his shoulders slumped even more deeply than they usually did. His fingers fumbled his sleeves back to the way they should be, a half-hearted effort to restore himself to Admiral Tyree; but his heart wasn't really in it. "You'll have to excuse me, Captain," he muttered, already free of the table, words only offered as a feeble afterthought. "I have duties to attend to."