(no subject)

[for_everyone]

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.

Comments

[for_everyone]

"Do you think they'd want us to return you?"

Her voice is even, with no suggestion as to how she'd feel about that.

[grandadmiralartcritic]

"No."

Thrawn does not even take a moment to think about his response.

"I sent them a replacement years ago, now."

[for_everyone]

Hera's quiet for a long moment after that.

Very carefully, "You've done a lot for them."

Or in their name, in any case.

[grandadmiralartcritic]

"No more than my duty."

And whether it means anything at all to the Ascendancy is anyone's guess.

Thrawn certainly cannot venture one.

"We are called to serve, and we do."

[for_everyone]

Again, Hera is silent for a long moment.

Finally, "If your duty to your people comes at the total expense of others, you won't have peace then, either."

[grandadmiralartcritic]

Thrawn is silent for a long few moments.

Then --

"We do aid others, on occasion. Or perhaps more frequently than that, but overseeing such things was never my task. We do not allow harm to ourselves and our dependents in order to offer such aid, however. Perhaps that is part of the difference."

[for_everyone]

"I think helping the Empire went beyond that."

[grandadmiralartcritic]

Thrawn inclines his head very slightly.

"There is that."

[for_everyone]

"I think I can understand why you wanted order."

Even if maybe it runs against her own feelings, even if it's something she's never herself experienced before now, Hera can at least understand that most want to live in some kind of peace and stability.

"And I hope you can understand that that wasn't what the Empire offered us."

[grandadmiralartcritic]

"I think," Thrawn says, after a long silence, "that I am beginning to."

It makes a difference, for him, not being bound to a mission any longer. One submits to the will of the Aristocra, regardless of personal feelings. It is . . . a very strange sensation to realize oneself suddenly unmoored.

[for_everyone]

"All right."

She can't expect more than that.

[grandadmiralartcritic]

"If that is all," Thrawn says, after another long moment of waiting, "I should doubtless get back to writing. There's still a great deal of information your republic is owed, and I came here in order to better get it done."

[for_everyone]

Her mouth quirks, barely, before she can stop herself. She lifts her glass to finish off her tea, then closes the lid of her box again, picking it up off the table.

"Goodbye, Thrawn."

[grandadmiralartcritic]

One corner of his mouth quirks faintly upward, as well, though his expression is doubtless more rueful than Hera's.

"Farewell, General."