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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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Hera looks up.

"It convinced me that anything besides a rebellion was pointless."

Her eyes fall again, and she carefully places the kalikori back in the box. "And that I was safer as an outlaw."

So, not that effective.

Edited 2017-07-13 12:26 (UTC)

Perhaps not in Hera's case.

But then, not everyone in the galaxy is like Hera.

"Not an unworthy lesson, certainly. It seems to have served you well."

Hera carefully straightens the hanging pieces of the kalikori, before lifting her hand, and reaching for her glass.

"You turned that around fast."

Thrawn exhales.

"I have never been particularly gifted at conversation."

"I don't think that's your problem," Hera mutters, lifting her glass.

"That is also true."

He keeps his hands folded in his lap. Waiting.

She sets her glass back down, looking into it, perhaps also waiting.

After a moment --

"I have never had a talent for outlawry, either."

She blinks back up, eyes fluttering a little in surprise. But she answers this easily enough.

"It helps to be born into it."

Thrawn's lips press flat again, for a moment.

"The Ascendancy does not have . . . "

This would be much easier in Sy Bisti.

" . . . much patience for those who fail to know their place. No, that's not right. Their role, in society."

Edited 2017-07-13 13:49 (UTC)

It does make her skin prickle. But then, Hera has been reminded many times of what other's see as a Twi'lek's 'place.'

"My goal wasn't to make everyone think the same way I do."

"What was it, then? Freedom only stretches so far before it becomes anarchy, and your re -- republic does not seem as if that is their goal. Nor did your work, from well before this until now."

He's curious, and it also seems as if she wants him to ask. But perhaps he is reading that wrong, too.

Ah, well.

She's not exactly fishing. But there's a weight lifted from her now, that she doesn't have to weigh every word against the idea that Thrawn might someday make her pay for it.

"The rebellion had to take in many different people, from places all over the galaxy, all with their own reasons for opposing the Empire."

Hera says 'the rebellion,' but she doesn't have to look any further than her own first crew.

"They all had different ideas and ways of thinking about the problems we faced. But they also worked together. Not just to end the Empire, but to lift each other up, and help those who needed it."

Hera leans forward, this time folding her hands over the table. "I don't think anything will be perfect. But that's what I hope the Republic can do."

He huffs out a breath that is not a laugh.

"There are parts of that which sound very much like the Ascendancy. Save, perhaps, for having different ways of thinking about the problems."

"It doesn't sound like the Empire," she answers.

"No. I told you once, I believe, that the Empire and the way it conducted business disgusted me. It has never not been true."

His smile contains no humor.

"But I was given a mission by the Aristocra. There is no space for liking of orders in the Ascendancy, either. That, at least, was one familiarity between them."

"And you're not accustomed to being an outlaw."

She lets out a breath. "But the rest of us lived with the same threat."

"And now you don't. It would seem to have been a success."

Thrawn's hands remain folded in his lap.

"Perhaps those who come after you will have learned enough not to repeat what came before. That is generally the hope, is it not?"

Hera looks up again, meeting Thrawn's eyes directly now.

"That is the hope," she agrees, quietly.

There goes the mirthless smile again.

"At least one of us should see that day. General."

Hera doesn't smile, but also doesn't look away.

"I'd rather we both see it."

"I am not entirely sure how likely that is."

More on his part than Hera's. Execution seems like such a likely answer to the Thrawn problem, in the end. And yet --

"Though I think I would not be sorry were that to be so."

"I'm not sure, either."

It feels cruel to pretend otherwise.

"I had not thought you were, General."

That is the thing with republics. The actual decisions are made on a much wider basis than otherwise. Perhaps that is not terrible, but for a man ruled by the Aristocra, it feels much more chaotic than is comfortable.

"I'd ask what you'd do in my place, but..."

But they both know what the eventual answer to that would be. Still, this thought doesn't seem to bother her. Instead, she finishes -

"... but I was much more afraid of living under the Empire than dying under it."