Ekkreth walks out of a room and raises her eyebrow.

"Hi."

"Hello."

"I was just telling your- partner? that I liked how you dealt with the resident Hutts. Very stylish."

"Stylish?"

"All in black at the head of a mob of slaves, the bombs in their heads mysteriously nonfunctional. Quite the dashing figure you cut. And then you spit on the corpses and said- what was it again?" She replicates the phonemes and intonation.

"The skywalker always frees the slaves at the end of the story."

"Does that mean your story's over?"

"There are lots of stories. One of them just ended, sure, but that doesn't mean there won't be any others with me in them."

"That's a commendable spirit. But given how this one turned out, I'm afraid duty now compels me to inquire whether you have any specific stories in mind for the future."

"My mother was an escaped slave. I didn't forget who I was when Darth Svahe murdered her and took me. If anyone tries anything, I'll do whatever it takes to protect my people. But I was never the kind of Sith who believes the best defense is a good offense."

"Is that so?"

"Within reason."

"Of course. You're from here originally, then?"

"Here as in the planet or the city?"

"Either."

"Planet yes city no."

"Why come back?"

"Because my people were still in chains."

"After thirty years? Something changed."

"The Sith Empire is no fit place to raise children."

"Which is where he comes in?"

Snort. "He was certainly relevant to the process, but he came in a lot longer ago than that. He helped my kill my master."

"Oh?"

"I ran off, I ran into him, he was understandably sympathetic to the goal of taking down a Darth, we got attached to each other, he failed to talk me into fucking off back to Tatooine before I had gotten as much out of the Empire as I could."