Royal Chambers

She was lost in thought, staring at the fire when he appeared between her coffee table and the massive carved wood and marble fireplace behind him. The room was lined with books, the scent of spiced cigarettes, fine liquor, leather, and well oiled wood furnishings. The draperies were dark red brocade, rich and sultry, heavy enough to block the light from the room. She opened the carved box on the table at her side and pulled out another spiced cigarette and lit it, dropping the match in the ashtray on the table. She licked her lips, savoring the sweet taste of cinnamon. The smoke curled out of her open mouth, blowing rings that floated up in front of him. Her tired eyes drifted up towards his face, leaning back into the deep and comfortable red couch. She gestured to the other end of the couch with the black papered cigarette

"You're the one with phenomenal cosmic power. Welcome to Kuat."

"Last drink with the condemned, I imagine. You have a year of regrets to accumulate. My ticket could get punched this week. The Mandos are coming here, I just got off a great call with the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. So you know, there could be a coup brewing in the bowels of this place because how dare I think we as a faction are not all powerful."

She stood up from the couch and wandered over to the sideboard where the bottles of liquor stood, silent soldiers in liquid uniforms of various colors. Rooting through a cabinet door on the front, she came away with an ornately inlaid case, setting it in front of Dresden, before she pulled the cigarette from her lips, a tired huff as she took her place once more. The case contained an exquisitely hand carved pipe and a smooth blend of loose leaf tobacco for use. A crystal cup filled with matches and a silver striker top sat on the coffee table next to her ashtray.

"Here, you can have this. Apparently the decorator they hired for my office thought the Lord of Dark Tide had a penis. Then again, I don't think I would enjoy this room as much as if they knew I was a woman when they decorated."

The cigarette was butted out in the ashtray, her hands free now to grab a pair of chopsticks and what looked like a small carton of pepper steak. She had not realized how hungry she actually was but the chopsticks were being used more for shoveling the food in her mouth rather than the delicate and graceful movements of selecting a morsel and tucking it neatly in her lips. She had opted for water after spilling her last glass of whiskey jumping to her feet. She chewed in silence for a few minutes before she threw politeness and manners out the window, speaking to him with a cheek full of fried rice.

"By the way, this is not me complaining about the Mandos. This is me in a bad mood because you and I should probably not kill 2 and half bottles of whiskey in a day. I got zinged back to the moment I was taken so technically, at this point, I have been up for 27 hours. Not to mention, worst hangover ever."

She swallowed the lump of masticated magical hangover cure, her stomach settling down now that it had something useful to do rather than constantly remind her that she was no longer a young girl with the metabolism of a gundark. She scooted across the cushions, her knees drawn to her chest, and leaned on his shoulder as she ate in silence another couple of minutes. The blood on his shirt sleeve did not escape her notice and she pointed at it with the chopstick in between bites.

"Whad'ya do there?"

Chewing with a much more thoughtful look, she pondered his sudden arrival again, adding to her question. "And what were you doing with a drink in one hand and a gun in the other? Did we both have bad days or something?"

"Don't. Women have a tendency to make you feel like your shortcomings with them are much larger than anything else in your world. A man who seeks to undo you, will break you from the outside. They have a harder time striking at the core of you. Women will rip your soul out and break you from the inside out. You are never the same after you have crossed paths with a woman, be it in a romantic sense or a far more sinister one."

The food was forgotten as he started to kneed the muscles in her back and she placed the carton the table before she slumped over on the couch, laying down with her face smushed in a pillow, her left arm hanging off the sofa. Her eyes were half rolled back in her head, but the flicker of the firelight danced in the mahogany browns. He was not touching her, physically at least but the prodding of the force along her spine lulled her into the relaxation of her defenses, both mental and physical. She could have fallen asleep if she tried to soothe her worrisome mind but instead she focused on his predicament and not hers.

"Things didn't go well with the Major then? What went wrong in three minutes?"

"Mmm..." She groaned in a breathy whisper as his fingers soothed her aching body of its maladies. She closed her eyes and chuckled wistfully at the irony of the situation. "Pinecones and insults. You sound like another odd couple I know." She let him work along her back and neck for a few minutes, eliciting the relieved sighs and gasps of a very grateful old woman. She would have happily been eating out of his hand by no-. Wait a tick. If things went so abysmally sideways for Eralam with the Major, what had precipitated it? To put it plainly, he seemed to have no problem reducing the Lord of Atrocity to a puddle with a shoulder to lean on, a drink, some chinese and a well timed massage. She pushed up from the cushions, twisting her torso around to get a good look at him, her expression wildly speculative.

"Do you treat her like you treat me? That is to say, do you speak to her like you speak to me? Bring her a drink, a comforting shoulder, some chinese? Do you show up out of nowhere and sweep her off her feet or am I the practice assignment?"

She leaned on her elbow, eyes narrowed at him. Exhaustion pushed her to anger quickly, jumping to conclusions that were probably hilariously incorrect but through the fog of sleeplessness, hangover and the stresses of war, she snapped at him like the steely jaws of a trap at unsuspecting prey.

"You cannot get anywhere with a woman you love unless you can treat her as you would treat a dear friend. Women are women despite their protestations. I have never allowed any sentient creature in this galaxy to call me a lady and I have spilled blood over it, but that doesn't change the vulnerabilities that all women carry inside." Her voice softened a bit as she sighed and the anger dissipated from her face. "I suspect the Major is no different. You have to understand that we warrior women, we have sacrificed much to attain our power. We have cut out our feelings, our wishes, our culture and our mothers. We have to embrace the trappings of men to assure them of the power of our minds and not the power of our breasts. In the process, we lose sight of who we are inside. Remind her that she is a woman, that deep down we want to be protected, that we wants to be cared for and that we want to be loved. Not all the time. Just some of the time. You will win her heart when you remind her that with you, it's safe and ok to have a heart. To the universe, she can be the Major, but with you, that illusion is not required."

She pulled her legs free from being prone on the sofa, and drug herself up from the couch. He looked puzzled and a bit gun shy given her snapping at him, but she leaned over and kissed his forehead with a sleepy half smile.

"Ponder that. I am going to bed."

She picked up her water and disappeared around the end of the couch through a doorway that lead to a hallway where her bedroom and bathroom where. The fire roared on, the liquor cabinet was well stocked and the pipe awaited his lips for deep thought on the things she had spoken before she drug herself out of her office.

Meanwhile, down the hall, she had kicked off her boots, donned a sleeping gown and crawled into a large bed with heavy drapes to block out the world. She let blessed silence take her mind and in a moment, she was fast asleep.

Several hours later, dawn had not yet broken on the horizon but the sky was draining darkness. A well rested Sinistra, showered and dressed and ready to attend her day, entered the office to see the fallen Whill resting in a chair with a colt across his lap. He probably wasn't sleeping, he had mentioned that he was keeping watch earlier. She carried a cup of caf for each of them, brought to her by her steward before the non essential staff were to be evacuated later. She stopped in front of him, holding out the caf for him.

"That was the best night of sleep I have had since, well, since a time on Jabiim so far out of memory now, it seems a dream. Here, have a caf." She walked over and switched off the fireplace, her cloak sweeping behind her like a delicate robe.

"I heard what you were yelling about before I feel asleep. If you have met her half way and she refuses to bend, then there is something else. Savor this, sugar. I have been known to be wrong occasionally. Perhaps I am wrong in this. I do not know your Major. Just the heart of this old Sith."

She walked to the window where she could see the movement beginning on the barracks as soldiers started their day with PT and breakfast, their purpose as clear as the departing night skies.

"I was something they would not not expect. I was humble. I even said please and I did not hide when I called them. It was in the Great Hall upstairs, before Bogan and everyone so that the Jedi knew I reached out to them from my seat of power. I was honest, brutally so in saying that my people were in danger and that together we stand a far better chance. And I told them that because I had come to them, my life could very well be forfeit but it is a cost I would pay to stop the march of that metal bound jerkwad."

A sad smile pulled the corners of her mouth as she sipped her caf and let her gaze unfocus looking at the horizon. The weave was too loose, too many threads that were trying to broaden the cloth and she could not see the final result. Too much interference to see the convergence of it all at Kuat.

"They will come, blood will be spilled, perhaps mine, perhaps others. I cannot see the pattern of the threads now. It is chaos and it hangs on a breath. There is nothing left but to take plunge and dive in the battle. This is the calm before the fray. I accept my possible demise. I do not fear death. Maybe then...maybe then I will understand the nature of the chains I wore here."

"The number of times I have said that. I know what you will do, you will show me a glimpse of a future you can discern better than I can. And what if I say, I would rather not know?"

Her brown eyes were determined but not without sadness within them.