"Marginally."

"We can talk here then." Even if she doesn't really like it. 

She turns to the ghost, then. "Darth Vader, right?" Meinwen asks, perhaps a bit acerbically. 

"One of the titles I have borne, yes," she replies softly, "And the one I use today."

"What other titles have you had?"

"Slave. Jedi Knight. Mother. Savior; hero; monster. I've been all these things and more." She keeps her expression and presence in the Force carefully controlled.

"You were a Jedi, once?" It seems… Incongruous, but perhaps explains part of Elesse's actions - a fallen Jedi feels less distant than someone raised as a Sith. (Also… There's a shatterpoint in this conversation, she knows there is, but…)

"Yes. I fell after an argument with my Jedi Master accidentally resulted in her death."

She furrows her brow, and just like the flow of battle -

Suddenly, where and how to strike is obvious. 

"That's not true," she says on instinct. "You fell before then - and it wasn't entirely an accident."

Perfect, even stillness, nothing readable - a crouched predator in wait - but somehow Meinwen has seen through her. "You see shatterpoints." Like Mace - she spares a brief thought to wonder if every rare Jedi with that ability has actually secretly been a Mace alt. 

With narrow eyes: "Yes. And you hiding your Force signature isn't helping me trust you."

"I suppose it wouldn't," she muses, and then forces herself to draw back some of that veil.

"I want to know who you are, not your titles - how do I know I can trust you with my friend?"

She hums, then: "Alright. My history… I suppose a better accounting of that is the best place to start?"

"It'd help."

Nod. "I was born the child of a Sith Lord. She didn't bother raising me herself; she gave me to someone else, the Master of my childhood, who raised me to use the Dark Side - and who, upon discovering my talents for hiding myself, decided she was entitled to use me as her assassin. She drew the attention of the Jedi. Three of them came and raided her base; one of them came directly to kill her - that woman, a Jedi Master, became my Jedi Master after. She rescued me, and she told me I needed training, and… That meant the Jedi. I wanted…"

"I wanted a parent, I suppose. I wanted someone to be proud of me. I wanted someone to be happy with me. I wanted someone to love me. So, I agreed on the condition that she become my Jedi Master. She agreed, and she fought to keep me as hers."

"It was… I loved her. But I never saw what few friends I'd had again; I never made new friends, except for one woman I met briefly on a mission when I was nine - I met her again and again, as I aged, and she told me I was a bright, mature girl. My Jedi Master gave me enough freedom to get myself in trouble - I started intentionally meeting with that woman. I saw her as my friend, at least at first, but… I hid the relationship from the Jedi - I knew I was too attached, but, more than that, I knew her interest in me was wrong. I didn't want to face that; I preferred telling myself that I really was unusually mature, and that my wit was enough to snare the attention of a woman old enough to be my mother, and I believed her easily when she called me beautiful - I believed her far too easily when she called me too wondrous to resist, no matter how much trouble I could get her in. I agreed to keep our little secret."

"Your Master didn't notice?" Meinwen asks, because Vader doesn't have to spell out the exact trauma for Meinwen to see how that must have gone.

"Elesse's Master is wise, and a Shadow exceptionally skilled in subterfuge, and she hasn't noticed her padawan regularly meeting with Sith," Vader points out, a bit dryly. "I actually think you should tell both your Masters about me, for what it's worth. I don't think it's healthy for Elesse to hide this." Not that Elesse agrees, though, and Vader has backed off on pushing. 

"But my Jedi Master… She'd been self-sufficient as a padawan. By the time she was thirteen, she'd been running a few simple missions on her own. I'd been running missions on my own at eight, nevermind what side I was on. It is very easy even for the wisest of Jedi Masters to miss that the ability to plan and execute a complex sabotage and assassination operation without help nor being caught does not, in any way, shape, or form, imply an ability to make good life choices. Being able to articulate complicated and mature philosophical opinions, which I was also rather good at, does not actually constitute wisdom, for all that it's often used as a proxy in assessments."

"...Fair," she concedes, while privately noting to avoid that particular mistake when it's time for her to take a padawan. ...Not that she has any idea how to.

"Anyways…" Vader looks off to the side. "A war broke out after several years. I became a Knight near the start, and my Master and I were immediately separated to different fronts. We tried to keep in touch at first, but… Things got busy, I suppose, and eventually calls petered into texts and then into nothing at all." She sighs and makes herself look back at Meinwen - reminds herself to keep her presence in the Force readable. 

"It didn't help that in the first major battle I was in, I discovered a talent for battle meditation - a massive talent. I became indispensable to the war effort overnight - especially since I didn't have the distance limits of most people with the talent. I needed someone I had a bond to as an anchor, and then I could act exactly as if I was there - I could lay on my bed in the Temple, meditating, and flit through every battle we'd stationed an anchor in. I formed bonds easily; that… Didn't make it hurt any less, when I failed, when assassins got through, and soldiers I'd grown accustomed to seeing as part of myself would die."

"And then… I managed to get critical intelligence through those talents - the location and defenses of the Sith Emperor. I brought them to the Council, who organized a strike force. I… Begged to be on the mission. I was told no." She goes quiet.

"...You'd already done enough for the war," Meinwen says quietly, because she isn't cruel. "More than anyone else, it sounds like - and you'd sacrificed enough, too."

Darth Vader gives her a sad, watery smile. "The Grandmaster of the Order said the same thing; it's good Elesse has a friend already as wise as that." (Mace Windu had technically stepped down at the start of the war to serve as a battlefield commander, but he deserves the title more than Yoda, so.)