Dažbog's Coffee Shop

Maybe it was a hallucination, maybe it was a dream, maybe it was an illusion crafted for her by the Fallanassi in her employ to blind her to the realities of the day to day drudgery of running the Empire. All she could say for certain before she opened her eyes was that she smelled coffee. She didn't know where she was looking around. There was no one immediately visible, except for a tall, bearded man standing behind a counter. She turned in circles, the decor confusing her with the earthy tones and acoustic guitar music piping through the speakers. She stepped cautiously to the counter, not entirely sure what the heck was going on.

"Where am I?"

She sniffed the coffee; it smelled delicious, with a hint of pumpkin spice in it and she reached for the raw sugar and cream to sweeten the dark brew to her liking. Setting the spoon aside on a napkin, she took a sip of the hot cup and let it warm her innards on the way to her stomach.

"I'd ask how I got here, but I have a feeling about that already. Let me guess, you're a Whill."

She reached and grabbed a handful of the cranberry and almond granola, enjoying the tartness with the nutty texture in comparison with the rich, dark roast of the coffee.

"So who are you?"

"You don't say."

She narrowed her eyes, setting the cup down, and arching an eyebrow. She was unsure how long they had been watching her, or how many of them had been crossing her path even though she spent a good chunk of her adult life looking for them.

"What is so curious about me? First I met Eralam when he's trying to scare a bunch of Jedi with coming face to face with a Sith. Then the next thing I know, he's rifting me all over the place to get drunk. Then Erevis turns up on Kuat because he happens to know I have a burning desire to reverse the clock and now I'm drinking coffee with you. It's more than a little suspect, you have to admit."

"Well, if I had known Tython was where they were located, perhaps I would have found you sooner. But regardless, my desire to find you all never manifested itself in me appearing here or Whills showing up where I am until recently. I find it...curious."

She purposely avoided the question he had hidden in the middle of his words, the thing she had really hadn't wanted to admit to herself. What was going on with Eralam. She smiled slyly from behind the mug, held in two hands that were perched on elbows in front of her.

"You present me with a quandry. Erevis knew something about me, a desire that I had vocalized to no one. So from that, I must assume you can read my thoughts and feelings. If you can, then I have a hard choice: to speak the truth no matter how much I don't want to face it or to lie knowing that we both know that you would be able to tell."

She swallowed hard, setting the mug down on the counter.

"He is the product of a sloppy ritual that has bound Whill powers in a mortal vessel ill suited to the task. That power is burning through him and it's killing him. He has less than a year. When he told me, I said I would make him live that year to the fullest. When he told me he wanted to live, I said I would scour the galaxy to find a way to save him and if there wasn't one, I would make one. Through him, there is mercy in darkness. You ask my intentions? I intend to make sure that regardless of how this year ends, he knows that I gave everything I had to give. His death will cause me more pain than I could ever inflict on him. I promise you that."

She was stoically quiet a moment. With a sharp inhale of breath through her nose, she picked up the coffee and sipped it again, her eyes cast down to the counter and her mood somber.

"Why do you want to know? "

"Three things about that. One, Eralam isn't exactly feeling the familial bonds since he was cast out. I don't blame him there. It would as if I expected my daughter to forgive the shitty things I have done to her. So I would not expect him to come to you for help. He feels abandoned and rejected. Two, his reincarnation into a mortal vessel was probably not exactly his choice. Science can only go so far. An alchemist might have had a better shot, but even then I don't think it would have made a difference in the long run. And three, some Sith care very deeply for others. It is the irrational reactions to strife and pain and love that cause us to twist our souls to the darker reaches of human suffering. Except Palpatine. That guy was just a psychopath."

She picked up the mug and sipped it again, cocking her head to the side.

"So what's your story?"

Her full lips twisted into a puckered smirk, a deep furrow forming between the dark eyebrows that were carefully sculpted into expressive arches.

"You sound like someone I once knew. He told me that I was not a proper Sith. That I was surely a darksider, but Sith should be reserved for the likes of Dragus, Mortale and Bacca; the truly evil ones. I struggle with the horrible things I have done, I feel the weight my power carries, and I long to have the balm that soothes this broken and deformed heart but that makes me lesser in the eyes of others. I was once the shallow and bitter hand of unforgiving death. I was two dimensional, flat and boring. I enacted violence for violence sake. There was nothing to me except to kill. No rhyme, no reason. Just "I'm going to be sadistic because that is what you think a villain should be". It's not. No one ever believes they are in the villain in their own story. No matter the blood on their hands. If that makes me lesser...so be it. None of the "true" Sith have claimed the mantle of Emperor as I have."

She pushed the mug away, crossing her arms over her chest and sitting up as she leveled him with a rather unfriendly look.

"Any thing else I haven't done right?"

"You are forgiven, Whill Dazbog. You have the power to kill me with a thought, I am not foolish enough to risk a fight. It just seems to echo in my ears a sour note of failure on my part. I crave approval. I crave acceptance. And a thousand voices of adoration are overpowered by only 1 dissent. I am woman, this is my curse."

She shrugged and hopped down off her stool, the diminutive woman swallowed by the flowing robes of black cotton and silk. She followed the old man to a wall of names, her fingers brushing over the name plates on the drawers, some of them names she had not seen or thought of in years: Cimmerii, Vitiosus, Filius, Si'at, Sarian, Cyrus Theron, Kaytren, Jen-Dai, Kurayami, Kariime, Cara, Azazel, Noja. A lifetime ago, a galaxy away, the dust was thick on their drawers. Names she had forgotten to the ravages of time and old age.

She stopped where the Whill did, looking at the drawer, his gaze directed her to. It was marked with her own name in a neat scrolling script. Tentatively, she reached up and gently eased out the drawer pull to reveal a stash of dark roasted coffee beans. She looked back up at him puzzled.

"What's this?"

She took the beans and rolled up the top of the bag tightly before she tucked it away in a pouch on her belt. It was true that she owed Erevis a pie and with a resigned sigh, she turned for the kitchen and found a Darth Vader apron to cover her robes with. She rolled up her sleeves and fetched some flour, butter and ice water to start the crust with. It was not long before the butter was cut in and a round ball was formed. She floured the counter and rolled it out while the oven preheated.

"You wish visitors to Tython, but for the most part, the Whills maintain an aloofness. They are disconnected from the universe at large. You are the recorders of history but you still exist within the confines of the galaxy. If you wish interaction from others, you must be willing to leave your comfort zone."

The pie crust was laid in the pan, a fluted edge put around it before it was filled with pie weights and stuck into the oven to bake for a few minutes. While it was in there, Sin gathered the ingredients for the filling. A saucepan was placed over medium high heat and she mixed in cocoa powder, sugar, salt and flour then added milk and vanilla extract. It cooked over the heat, stirring constantly until it thickened up and she tempered in some egg yolks and returned it to heat. She pulled the crust out and emptied the weights out of it, replacing them with the thick, dark rich chocolate custard. She let it sit a moment or two while she put egg whites, sugar and cream of tartar in a blender and beat them until stiff peaks. The meringue finished, she spread it over the custard and popped it back in the oven to brown.

She turned to the Whill, picking up her misplaced cup from before.

"I am not sure I wish to relive some of those memories. I am no longer the same woman who lived them."

She pulled out the bag of beans and proceeded to brew some of her own beans, marveling that aroma smelled something like couldn't quite place her finger on.

She toasted him and sipped the coffee, letting it sit in her mouth a moment to taste it with all her taste buds. The memory was a rich one indeed, and she let it swell her ribs with pride until she was certain they would break apart to spill her innards across the floor. She set the cup down and fetched the pie out of the oven, leaving it on a wire rack to cool. She hung up the apron and snapped her fingers with a wave of her arm. The breeze from the motion swept the kitchen clean, dishes tumbling into the sink and back out again sparkling clean and off to their respective cupboards. She pulled on her cloak and as she turned back to face the old Whill, he might have caught a fleeting glimpse of what looked like golden lines of characters and numerals streaming down what should have been her face before they melted back into her skin and the Emperor was there again. It could have been a trick of the eye, an illusion brought on by too much coffee, but one could never be sure of things like that on Tython.

"Getting into a philosophical discussion with a Whill is never a good idea."

She sipped the coffee and the memory this time was bitter, almost as bitter as the unsweetened roast. She forced it down, scowling as she huffed her displeasure. She had forgotten that particular moment in time, but nonetheless, Dazbog was right. It had shaped her to be who she was today.