The Park, Friday Morning

[suitably_heroic]

The medic had freed Atton from his kolto bath again on Thursday morning. Another full day of observation, and he was good to go, with a bunch of patches in his pocket and an abdomen that still hurt if he bent the wrong way.

And then Mical had put him on the Ebon Hawk and sent him back to Fandom. (The Hawk was to make a point: stay there, don't come back. Otherwise Mical would've just kicked him through a portal.)

He wasn't planning to stay there. Not for long. Not with Mira out there, dealing with this problem that Atton was beginning to suspect was bigger than they'd anticipated.

He didn't bother to go back to the apartment - he didn't want to run the risk of running into Sparkle just yet - but stumbled down the stairs and walked down to the park.

That alone was probably more exercise than he should've given himself. He winced at the sound of his own breath as he sank down on a bench.

Space.

[[ open! ]]

Comments

[suitably_heroic]

Atton breathed out a big plume of smoke and leaned back, ignoring the twinge in his gut as he did so.

"My Republic wasn't fast enough to act when the Mandalorians rolled in," he said lightly. "When they did jump into action, the army was outnumbered and outflanked, and the Jedi were so scared after the last war that they decided to stay out of it and left us to die."

[spectre_alenko]

"Mandalorians," Kaidan turned the word over, "The ones with the armor the troopers ripped off. They were the aggressors, in your time? And the badass, plasma-sword wielding space wizards ..sat it out."

Yeah, the Jedi weren't really winning any points here.

"So much for 'there is no chaos, there is harmony', I guess."

[suitably_heroic]

"They were trying to be harmonious, and just wound up letting the Mandalorians light a fire in our homes," Atton said. He snorted. "But they didn't all take it laying down. This Jedi called Revan rebelled against the Order. He took a bunch of young knights and Padawan with him and took control of the Republican Army. Saved it."

[spectre_alenko]

Kaidan processed that as well, "How do you go from 'saved the Republic' to 'and then it all burned and the Jedi were wiped out'?"

'Our'. Interesting.

[suitably_heroic]

"War weighs heavily on most people, and worse on the Jedi," Atton said. He shrugged, eyeing the tip of his cigarette for a while. "Revan got sick of the way things were going. So he crushed the Mandalorian forces and then took the entire Republic army and his wing of Jedi into the Unknown Regions. Well, the entire wing but one, I mean."

He brought the cigarette back up.

"When he came back, he went to war against everyone who had abandoned the people of the Republic. The Republic government, and the Jedi."

[spectre_alenko]

"Is 'Unknown Regions' a term for 'area outside the galactic core', or do you mean dark space?" Kaidan asked, tilting his head a little.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton made an amused noise. "Right, you don't know the basics," he said. "Our galaxy's divided up in a few sectors, roughly speaking. Deep Core, Core, Inner Rim, Expanse, Mid Rim, Outer Rim... and somewhere beyond the Outer Rim, the Unknown Regions."

Beat.

"We don't know what's there, hence, Unknown. We're not always great at naming things."

[spectre_alenko]

"Not of your galaxy, no," Kaidan agreed, "That's why I'm asking all the questions about it. In ours, there's the Galactic Core, and named areas of space, but there's also dark space, which exists alongside the galaxies in a starless expanse. It's..not a good place, and most races can't access it." He wasn't sure how to explain it. Scientists had tried, he just wasn't on their level. As far as he was concerned, 'dark space' was 'here there be Reapers'.

"So he took off to the great unknown, then came back and ..cleaned house?"

[suitably_heroic]

"That's one way of putting it," Atton said. "He either killed or converted a large portion of the Jedi before they managed to capture him, mindwiped him and sent him back to dismantle his own empire."

[spectre_alenko]

Converted. That word.. "He ..went..Sith?" Kaidan asked, groping for the terminology.

[suitably_heroic]

"That's what his army called themselves after they came back, at least," Atton said lightly, with the voice of a man just recounting history.

[spectre_alenko]

Yeah, that wasn't going to fly. Kaidan hadn't heard anyone from Atton's galaxy talk lightly when referring to the Sith. However, when a war veteran takes that tone.. you don't push it. He had no doubt Atton had been involved - if your home's on fire and you do nothing, you die. Atton wasn't dead.

"Is that where it started? The use of the word to mean 'Jedi gone dark'?" Kaidan asked, and explained, "I've only ever heard it used in that context, but sometimes it sounds like it has a different meaning."

[suitably_heroic]

Atton frowned. "No," he said, "That word was already in use back when Exar Kun started the war before all of this happened. Turned from the Jedi and declared himself Dark Lord of the Sith. And I'm pretty sure he had some old Sith Lord rattling around his brain. Mical'd know more."

[spectre_alenko]

"'The war'?" Kaidan asked.

You guys had so many, it was hard to keep them straight, really.

[suitably_heroic]

"Yeah, the war before the Mandalorian War," Atton said, waving, since clearly the 'before all of this happened' hadn't landed right. "The one that scared the robes off of the Jedi. We had a few decades of peace after that, it was nice."

[spectre_alenko]

"Sounds like it was some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Jedi goes bad, goes to war against the others, that war ends, the surviving Jedi refuse to get in a war, which sends one of their own over the edge, then he comes back and starts a war with them," Kaidan said.

Honestly, Jedi, WTF.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton tilted his head.

"Nah," he said after a moment. "Exar Kun was just an asshole."

[spectre_alenko]

"Revan wasn't?" Kaidan asked, curious more than anything. Honestly he was kind of on Revan's side.

He knew how he'd felt when the Council had failed to listen or act the number of times John had warned them what was coming.

[suitably_heroic]

"He pitched in when the galaxy needed him. He came in, he saved us," Atton said. "It wasn't a power trip, at least not at first. Maybe it never was."

[spectre_alenko]

"I guess it would be hard to know. It's not like you could really ask him questions after he'd been mind-raped into oblivion," Kaidan said.

He had feelings about that. Lots of them. Complicated, mostly negative.

[suitably_heroic]

"From what I hear, he remembered eventually," Atton said. "Jedi like their dirty little secrets, but they can't keep them forever. He left, though. Not long after that."

[spectre_alenko]

"They're lucky he was that generous. I'm not sure I would be, if that had happened to me," Kaidan said, "Especially not if I remembered."

"Totally fine, violating someone's mind and sending him back against people who were pissed off that the Jedi let people die, but slavery? That's too penny-ante to bother with," he said a minute later, a muscle in his jaw tensing and flexing, "Thank you for telling me all this. That.. is not something I would have wanted to blunder into with her."

[suitably_heroic]

"Who, the Twi'lek?" Atton said. (He hadn't told even half the story, but he was happy to leave it until Kaidan picked it up again.) "Couple thousand more years to go, remember?"

[spectre_alenko]

"Asking her about a planet and a people that've been slave-raided is probably not something I want to ever do," Kaidan said, "I don't like to see my friends upset. I can imagine this is right in the 'upsetting' bank."

[suitably_heroic]

"Probably," Atton agreed. "At least it looks like she managed to get out okay. You know, from a distance."