"Just that Sith do have reasons for what they do - not necessarily nice reasons or ones that other kinds of people would consider good enough for the damage they do, but the reasons do exist."

Diana nods.  "That's certainly not false.  It...doesn't help, though."

Not in this case, anyway. "Yes ma'am."

"...I'm sorry this all has been laid on your shoulders.  It shouldn't have had to be.  I'm not your master, but...if I can dare to say so, you've done so very well by her."

This Jedi is so weird. Not that she's complaining, if it keeps her master alive. "Thank you, ma'am."

"It's really the least you deserve, going above and beyond like you did with this.  Is there anything I could arrange to ease your duties?"

"I don't think so, ma'am. I can let you know if anything comes up."

"Please, do.  I do most of the maintenance myself, I can spare time for you and especially for all this."

...there is definitely an astromech on board, why is the human doing maintenance? "Yes ma'am."

Well, that's all she has for this conversation.  And she does have maintenance to do.  So she'll go do that.

And R4, who has had the conversation he's predicting he will have so many times before, trundles on in after.

DZ doesn't speak to him immediately, assuming he has work to do; instead she goes to adjust Deskyl's holoprojector to show a different sunset.

He's still there when she gets back to the doorway, though, so after another moment, she whistles: Your human is strange.

R4 whistles back, She's unique.  I like her.  What confuses you about her so far?

She keeps talking to me in a strange way. And she didn't seem upset when my Sith tried to kill her - don't worry, my Sith is very bad at killing people right now and will realize it's a bad idea here before she gets much better at it.

...The common thread, there, is that she cares about the lives and well-being of everything that can think.  Including us.  Including even the Sith she's killed.  And I think she just can't blame people for their instincts.  Even violent ones.  It didn't hurt anybody, anyway.

Strange.

How do you deal with it?

...With what?

With her wanting strange things and speaking strangely to you.

Astromechs don't have as much programming against having opinions and wants and things, but she's pretty sure they have some, so he should know what she's talking about.

I mean...It was a little weird, starting out, I guess, especially when she started trying to pay me - I got her to agree to putting most of that into the ship, because I want to be the best astromech I can and an astromech needs a good ship, and I do actually pick parts sometimes - but I haven't had anything like that come up for years?  There was a bit of...She likes tinkering with things, but we agreed to split it; I handle the slicing, she handles the assembly.  She uses ship maintenance for meditating and Force practice, actually.

My Sith doesn't like it when I ask for things for her when I'm asked what I want for myself. :T

I'll talk to Diana about talking to your Sith about it.  What drives you to do that?

You want to be a good astromech so your focus is your ship; I want to be a good servant droid so my focus is my Sith.

I don't think it would help me for them to talk about it.

I see.  I think it might; my Jedi isn't a diplomat, but she's good with fleshy minds.  Walked us right into and out of a Sith base one time without a single Force hack.  So if anyone can get across that you really do want what you want, and that trying to say you should do otherwise actually isn't going to help, it's probably her.

Oh.

Maybe, then.

I do want to be how my Sith wants, it's just hard when she wants things that go directly against what I am.

Definitely something to talk about, then.  ...Anything else you think you'd be better off knowing?