Aran sprawled in her cabin chair, her droid cheerfully directing the actual flight of the ship while the tired Miraluka simply sat. Arms hung limply over the rests and the somewhat warmed leather and chair protested as she stretched back, shifting, trying to get comfortable. She'd started to feel itchy on Nar, itchy on planets again so Aran had decided to do what she always did when she felt the itch to travel, sinking her metaphorical toes into the research Ihl had gotten.
Then when that had stopped holding her attention, she pulled through the monitor feeds she had sliced around, shutting down old relays no longer needed, removing a protocol looking for a woman and child, and perusing the information gleanable from them. Tyron she was watching with a keen eye now, seeing the signs, more and more, that he'd finally started to use his head-bound brain to work on problems instead of just screwing them to his way of thinking. Some of the people hired for Sanguine were scum - but some of them she knew were still, somewhere, good people. Fingers paused over the screen and a smile came to her face, pulling up the hiring applicants.
Some of the people Sanguine had were very good people and there for the same reasons she was, to make a spot of good in even a dark of a place as the underworld. To mark the Sith, find the people they could save, and find those they couldn't. Vii and Phylok and Nia and Xan - a moral compass to balance a job and people she knew would let her use sanguine for the entire reason it existed. People who'd sigh and shake their heads but let her slice their clients if she needed to, getting the hooks from the ground to pull a Sith House down, weaken it, make them a threat to be removed if they were too Dark, too lost to be saved. She had to simply bide - be as patient as she'd been when she set up her information network on Nar, earning the slow trust before she could put a pulse on nearly any tidbit of news.
It'd take time but it would work, and pay off as surely as her first major project had.
Fingers rested on the screen as she tapped and pulled up another file. Tylen. Scythe. She wasn't sure she liked him - an assassin, bound not by the code of a jedi or the Republic, but whatever was left of Imperial training. But even he'd shown something, turning himself in - without fanfare, without warning, without question - to save someone he'd once loved. Someone who was with another man, now. Someone like that.... deserved to die someplace freer than a prison cell of the Empire. And it wasn't a job she could risk Marran on - they were embroiled in a war that it seemed so few were getting. The people she'd hired would get the job done, though, even if they didn't all like him.
Picking the corpses and dead over, through rubble and smoke and damaged walkers and droids... she'd felt her age, then. It had been a long time since she'd felt how old she actually was, and under it all a dank knot of ruddy Force that made her skin shiver to recall, knowing it was once so pleasant to use. She hated war, hated what it meant to everyone and hated how she knew she came off as ... unsure. Divided.
Pushing out of the chair she tugged the strap holding her hair out, a hand running through the strands and muttering. She was an Arbiter in the Marran, she was supposed to lead the Wraithguard, to guard and guide the Marran as best as she could and protect them. She paused at the doorway, one hand on the sill as she breathed in softly, the air light and crisp, smelling like she fancied night should smell. Fingers tightened on the sill and she leaned on the doorjam, a feeling of 'tired' woven in her limbs by now.
It was hard to put into words how she didn't feel it was a compromise. She wondered if Ihl knew or guessed the double meanings when they'd spoken about Xan. She wondered if she should give him the carefully scribed writings she'd sat at a desk to neatly carve, pulling one out and running a finger down the script, feeling it as much as seeing it. It felt... she paused, weighing the feeling itself, then pulled the small pile out and set them aside.
She'd give them to Ihlrath once she was back at the Monastery. So much work and never enough hours in the day.
She still hadn't figured out what to even do about the Black Barge yet and once again a feeling itched between her shoulders, sighing and sitting back down once she'd made her way to the cockpit. Now she felt the ground pulling away from her feet, the gaping maw of what choices she could make. Aran spent a moment wishing she could just file a report to the Jedi Council and let someone else make the decision before she stopped. That was... irresponsible. She'd started this effort, knowing it would be - choices like this maybe not, but something similar.
She leaned back now, replaying the broadcasted Galactic Fifth Column's message, a finger tapping as she wondered how thin the lines between Book, Aran, and Artia were drawn now, and how hard it was going to be for someone to link her identities together. She was bad at this unless it was a Sith persona, she knew, but her comfort as a smuggler had picked up the more she actually did the work.
But really, how long was she going to be able to play this game before someone - the Fifth Column, the Barge, or a client - looked at the once Jedi ranks, found a smuggler matching that appearance... Book wasn't a common name, honestly, and she'd worked the Smuggler's Moon for so long people called her any three names and she'd answer.
It felt like a house of cards. One finger, a flick, a name, a word, and someone might try to leverage something against her, threaten her or someone she cared about. Someone she'd put herself to protect. Or what if someone went after those people, looking for a line against her?
Fingers splayed in the open air of the cockpit as she droid continued to navigate, silver fire dancing over her fingers as she began to plan again. Jedi, agent, Sith, smuggler, freelancer - she could work with any of those and explain anything away, provided her tongue was glib enough. She was still a small fish, so she fancied the Galactic Fifth would still chase Kashira and others first. She needed to figure out what to do though, hand twisting and unaware of the play, fire against the tan of her skin as she debated and thought and reasoned and wondered.
Maybe she'd seek out Eron. Her hand closed, flames dancing over the fist. Maybe she'd ask to head to Coruscant and make a full, detailed report to the Republic's police. Her hand opened again, relaxing as she leaned back. Maybe she'd wait, until she had enough to bring the entire Barge down, hoping her wits would be enough to make the entire game worth while.
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