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Hera enters the Bar, holding a slender metal box between her hands. She blinks around, her grip on the box growing a little tighter, maybe deciding whether or not she wants to stay this time.

In the end, she does, moving through the room until she takes a seat at a table near the Bar. She sets the box down and aside, and then orders red leaf tea from a waitrat. It's served cold, and very bitter, and she sips at it while watching the room, and maybe purposefully not glancing down to the box.

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Thrawn, dressed in worn grey pants and a shirt, with a blinking cuff on his ankle, also enters the bar, carrying nothing.

He sees Hera, but rather than approach, moves instead to take a seat that is clearly visible from her own.

Perhaps eye contact will come later. Or not.

Hera continues to sip her tea for a few minutes, before turning her eyes to him.

It's long enough to show she knows he's there. But she doesn't move, not feeling a need to force her company on him.

Thrawn meets her gaze after a moment, holding it for long, silent seconds.

Then he raises an eyebrow, gesturing to the empty other side of his table with a quick lift of his jaw.

Unless she would prefer not to speak to him. That is, particularly now, entirely her choice.

Hera raises her eyebrows back.

But then, she looks down, picking up her glass and the box she entered with, and rising from her chair.

She moves slowly toward his table, as though still allowing plenty of time for him to move away.

He doesn't shift so much as a whisper away, though he does nudge a chair out with his foot.

To show willing, of course.

"General," he acknowledges, once she's close enough to hear. "It is not unexpected, seeing you here."

"No, it's not," Hera agrees. She sits down, setting her glass and the box on the table.

"Do you want a drink?"

Thrawn does not even look toward the box, though presumably he noticed Hera carrying it on her approach.

"I would not say no, certainly. Perhaps a fruit juice of some type?"

Hera nods, and stops a waitrat long enough to order meiloorun juice.

Then she looks up again, quiet for a moment before asking, "How are you?"

"Physically hale, perhaps unsurprisingly. I do get leave for exercise one hour a day."

His mouth remains pressed flat, composed and only a little grim.

"Otherwise things are painstakingly dull."

He is, for instance, permitted no decoration in his cell. So it goes.

"And yourself?"

"It hasn't been dull."

Boredom is the last thing Hera could possibly complain about, at the moment.

"A very lovely non-answer."

He smiles faintly, but it passes quickly.

"I have turned in the star charts for the Unknown Regions, and am in the midst of detailing the customs of various planets and peoples. In case you were wondering."

"I appreciate it."

It's the first thing that comes to mind, but the moment she says it, she has the thought that it sounds like something he would say. Her eyes flicker down, and she shifts very slightly as she reaches for her tea again.

He huffs out a breath that is close cousin to laughter.

"I find myself wondering what my people would think of me. We do not, on the whole, respect failure, whatever the cause."

"Your people exiled you."

It's quiet, just short of a question.

"Ah, yes. That is what I told the Emperor, when a scouting patrol stumbled across my crashed ship on an uninhabited planet. It is not strictly untrue."

There's just more to it than that, and.

Well.

Given how great a shift the power centers in the former-and-now-again republic have recently undergone . . .

Perhaps it's time for this game to shift, as well.

"I guess that means it's not strictly true, either."

Her voice is still quiet.

Edited 2017-07-11 15:58 (UTC)

He smiles, just the merest upward curve at one corner of his flat mouth.

"No. I was sent."

Her head tilts slightly.

"To help the Empire?"

"To fortify the Empire. To keep it a strong force in this sector of the galaxy, as a bulwark against what lies deep within the Unknown Regions. Alas, I failed. Perhaps your republic-to-be will pick up the slack."

A mirthless smile crosses his lips.

"We could not rely on that at the time. Even still, I suspect my people are . . . . displeased with how events have played themselves out."

Hera's quiet for a moment, before she asks -

"They would've preferred an Empire to a Republic?"

"I suspect they would have taken the Republic, too, had certain events happened earlier than they did. It is this chaos of reformation and rebuilding that they . . . we . . . find wasteful and distressing, in neighbors."

To put it a little gently, but only just.

A little dry, "I guess we'll have to learn to live with each other."

"One can only hope there is time for that. We shall see."

A pause, and his lips purse the faintest bit.

"Or rather, you will."

Hera watches him for another moment.

"You never worried the Empire might look to your home?"

She leans forward, crossing her arms over the table, breaking with any kind of military formality.

"Not even after Alderaan?"

"Having seen the Imperial machine from the inside -- "

He pauses, as if giving room for the weight of his experience with said machine.

" -- much less so after the Emperor and Vader perished."

Thrawn folds his hands on the table, watching Hera over his knuckles.

"But there is something to be said for a planet-killer as a deterrent. You, too, might want one eventually."