"You can. But you're going to have to decide that for yourself."

When I touched that sphere of light, it made me see things. Things that aren't real.

(Things that I don't want to be real.)

(Things that would hurt if they were real.)

Can you alter people's memories?

(If she can, she won't tell you.)

I don't know what's going on. I don't know what to believe.

She shakes her head, and drifts closer, reaching out in a quickly-aborted gesture that's still clearly an offer of a hug, even if she doesn't expect it to be accepted.

    "Not like that, no. What happened?"

I'm not real. My whole life, up until about a decacyle ago, was all made up.

Why? I don't know. It doesn't make sense. (What is the point of me?)

I remember being lied to over and over again. Told made up stories about my past.

But how could they be made up? Adita remembers it all too. Adita remembers me being there.

And she's not broken like me... she can remember her whole life clearly?

So it's got to be a mistake. Either your magic is wrong, or I'm not understanding what I'm seeing, or...

Deskyl drifts closer again, and doesn't retract her offer of a hug this time. Signs, one-handed.

    "She doesn't know, either. She'd like to find out. But - you are real, no matter what. Nothing can change that."

I don't know what I should do.

I don't know who I should trust.

Somebody out there is lying to me and I Don't Know Who Or Why!?

(Emotion Read: receptive to hugs.)

She completes the hug.

    "She'll help, if you want her to. It'll help her answer her question, too."

Devika is not very good at hugging. She has not hugged a lot of people in her life.

It's very good to be touched, though. She's been without human contact for a pretty long time.

It's a small but intense relief, amidst an ongoing roil of uncertainty.

"I think I need all the help I can get."

Deskyl's good at hugging; she hasn't had many hugs, recently, either, but it comes naturally to her.

    "Well, you have us. That's how this works."

(Dheto says nothing.)

(Dheto isn't her problem. Hugs continue.)

(She'd been a little worried that they'd... ah, nevermind. She closes her eyes and focuses on piloting.)

Eventually the hug has done most of the good it's going to do; Deskyl doesn't pull away, but she does disengage a little. She finds herself looking up at Dheto.

    "She wasn't the only one who made a mistake, you know," DZ relays without preamble, as instructed.

"Could you elaborate, please?"

   "I told them that it was dangerous to disturb Deskyl while she was asleep, and that she might react violently. We don't know why that didn't work, whether the Legionnaire I told didn't relay it, or Saru didn't take it seriously, or something else, but they were warned."

"Yes. Obviously, with you sleeping where you were, they couldn't not respond to an unexplained electromagnetic disturbance of the sort that she created... but it occurred to me when I first heard the news that perhaps our masters should have been more cautious. Culamine shouldn't have asked Saru to grant you preferential guest treatment, or Saru should have ignored that request."

Deskyl nods.

    "It's understandable that they didn't; it would have been undiplomatic. But all three of them were making the trade-offs that seemed best at the time; we're still not sure that Deskyl isn't risking her recovery when she exerts herself too much."

"Yes. In my heart I questioned their judgement for a moment, but that came from a point of human failing. I wasn't seeing the bigger picture. The larger trade-offs."

"Perhaps if they had been less hospitable to you, that legionnaire would still be alive. But perhaps if they'd been less hospitable, you would have chosen to stand by on the sidelines instead of rescuing those hundred vassals of Culamine's?"

"I have to trust that my master's choices, and the choices of her sisters, are for the best in the long run--because they've always been for the best before, and because I know with my fragile human heart I could not do better."

"Don't take my words as a slur against my whole species, though. Some humans can fend for themselves pretty well. Perhaps you're one of them?"

    "Of course she is, she's a Sith."

"And sith are the leaders where you come from? Yeah. That makes sense."

    "Sith run the Empire, yes. She wasn't aspiring to it particularly, but she's still been trained for leadership. And her magic is strongest when it's being used in service of her own goals, too, by nature. Prospective Sith who can't harness that don't last very long, generally."

"What's that like? An empire with no dragons, but with magic people who get stronger the more selfish they are?"

Dheto does not imagine she'd do well there.

(Or, rather, she expects she'd do well in a way she would really prefer not to.)

Deskyl chuckles, briefly, mirthlessly.

    "You've got the right idea, she says. And - consider that she not only survived that, but maintained herself as the type of person who would save a hundred of an ally's vassals just because they were there, with only one casualty even among her enemies, while still badly injured herself, before you suggest she bend knee to anyone."