Ignorant Orbits

Posted on Fri Mar 27th, 2026 @ 2:34am by Amare & Thane

3,595 words; about a 18 minute read

Chapter: Chapter VIII: Broken Chains
Location: Commerce Station, Tion Cluster
Timeline: Days after New Alderaan

The station hung in slow orbit above the gas giant like a bead of light caught against the immense bands of colour below. Amber and jade storms rolled endlessly across the planet’s surface, its rings stretching outward in a pale silver arc that caught the distant star and scattered it into drifting light. Several moons moved through the view beyond the transparent bulkhead, each following its silent path across the vastness.

The restaurant had claimed the view as its main attraction. It was one of the countless mid tier chains that had begun spreading across the Core and the Inner Rim in recent years. Familiar branding and predictable menus, with olished metal tables and soft lighting designed to make travellers forget how temporary their stop truly was. Dock crews, merchants and passengers from half a dozen species occupied the room, speaking in quiet clusters over drinks and steaming plates of food. Light and inoffensive music played overhead.

No one paid much attention to the two figures seated near the viewport.

Thane sat with his back straight, one gloved hand resting lightly against the table. His cloak was folded neatly over the chair behind him, the dark fabric catching faint reflections from the gas giant beyond the glass. His eyes glowed openly now, gold and unmistakable. They were bright against skin that had grown noticeably paler in the weeks since New Alderaan, even by Caanan standards. Beneath the surface, faint tracings had begun to show themselves along his temples and the edge of his jaw. Darkened veins that were subtle enough to pass unnoticed by most people in the room, yet close up they hinted at something slowly changing beneath the surface.

The nascent Sith Lord seemed unconcerned by it.

A server droid delivered their meal. The plates were simple but carefully prepared, with grilled protein cuts with spiced vegetables and a dark sauce typical of the region - the sort of reliable fare that a chain restaurant perfected through repetition.

After pleasantries, the droid withdrew from the table with a soft whirr of repulsors, its polished chassis gliding back toward the service aisle where other identical units moved between the tables in silent patterns.

Thane's golden eyes were drawn upwards, the glow ethereal even in this lighting, and were drawn to a pair of traders sat beside the viewport further down the room, arguing over cargo tariffs displayed on a datapad. At another table, a small family spoke quietly over their meal while two children leaned close together watching a holoscreen.

Ordinary people. Ordinary concerns.

Thane lifted a small piece of the protein from his plate and tasted it. The flavour was balanced. Adequate and carefully engineered for mass appeal. He set the utensil down again and for a few more moments he simply observed the room once more.

No one looked twice at him. The eyes drew brief glances from time to time. Curiosity perhaps, or a flicker of unease. Yet no one lingered on the sight long enough for it to matter. Lots of Near-Humans and augmented beings of countless variations existed in the galaxy, so few truly understood or cared.

Fear required context.


His gaze returned to the viewport. A freighter emerged slowly from behind one of the moons, engines glowing a dull blue as it angled toward the docking lanes. Traffic control beacons flickered across the rings, guiding vessels through the orbital corridors that threaded the station's perimeter.

Commerce never slept - the galaxy continued its endless movement whether wars were fought in shadow or not.

Thane lifted his glass as he mixed and took a slow drink.

The reflection in the glass showed his own appearance for a moment. The dark side altered those who embraced it, and he had always known this, experienced it in small doses and witnessed it in others, but now he could see it plainly, completely, in himself.

He lowered the glass to the table once more.

Nearby a server spoke politely to a group of newly arrived travellers, guiding them toward an open table near the centre of the room. Their laughter carried briefly across the floor before fading beneath the steady murmur of conversation.

It was normal. The galaxy seemed calm, as if none of them knew of the threat of Axion or the rising political tensions polluting the galaxy once more. They even seemed oblivious to the mad torrents and storms that the nearby gas giant represented, plain to either scientists or those sensitive to the Force that could feel the currents.

The shield of ignorance.

Thane allowed his attention to finally settle now upon Amare, sat opposite him, seemingly lost in her own thoughts.

"You're looking well again," he finally said, noticing properly that the physical effect of New Alderaan finally seemed lifted. "And you've not been apart from your new prize."

She heard every word but hardly seemed to notice. Outwardly, she was comfortable in her custom black bodysuit, her cloak draped over her chair just like Thane's, and Glynt's lightsaber equipped at her side with a bit of the cloak's fabric concealing it, but her physiognomy betrayed a different story. She was deeply troubled, that much was clear.

"Yes," she halfheartedly replied with a flat emotionless tone, staring off into space through the viewport, hardly concerned with her hot meal in spite of her deep hunger, "I think it suits me."

Thane’s attention did not drift this time as he watched her properly. Not the surface she presented, but the dissonance beneath it. The delay in her responses and the absence of appetite. The way her focus slipped rather than settled.

His eyes narrowed slightly.

"New Alderaan is still with you." It was not a question. It was an observation made with quiet certainty. "You have been elsewhere since we left it. You are not truly present here. You are still so troubled by-"

"I've become a liability to you," Amare turned to Thane addressing his pressing concern with a low tone laced with simmering antipathy. "What happened in that room..." Her hands trembled slightly as she reached for her utensils, "...he got me." She snapped her fingers as she added, "Just like *that*. No time to prepare, to make a stand, to know what to do. Everything I've endured this past year, all the training and knowledge you gave me...and facing my brother..." She turned back to the viewport and shook her head as her tone shifted to seething and self-loathing. "It was for nothing." She turned back to Thane, stared him hard in the eyes with a scowl, her shame still raw after a few days. "Their leader wasn't even in the room. A talking corpse and a slave had a small shard of his power and crippled me in seconds. It seems so surreal. Can't get it out of my head. I-I just...I thought I was close to figuring it all out. This life, what we've committed ourselves to become, these abilities. And now...how can I be your apprentice after what happened?"

She raised her warm cup of herbal tea to her nose, took in the satisfying aroma, but her emotions refused to let her quench her thirst, and calmly set the beverage down, barely able to control her disgust. Amare had failed so utterly and completely on New Alderaan, and they both knew it.

Thane did not react to the interruption. He let her finish, his gaze fixed on her throughout, unflinching.

"A liability," he finally repeated quietly, placing his cutlery down more firmly. "No." The word was dismissed without hesitation. "You are exactly where you should be. A year ago you were barely surviving, and now you walk into something like that and live. You endured. We are the Sith, and we succeeded... Did you truly think that you would understand all of this within a year? That nothing could reach you, that you would be untouchable? That is not mastery - it is delusion."

He watched her for another moment, no immediate encouragement for a response yet.

"What happened beneath the Wyrd Estate was not failure." A slight pause, then sharper. "This is."

The boiling steel of his molten gold gaze required no acknowledgement from Amare. The point was given, and understanding was expected. Amare took in a slow trembling breath and nodded slowly. She could not deny he was right. He was always right. Her lord...her master...her...

...god...?

She waited for him to say more, but he held his intense scrutiny at her for a moment longer. Compliancy wasn't enough; he expected a response, or there would be hell to pay. She answered the unspoken call.

"You've prepared me for many things," she said leaning in a bit closer and speaking in a more hushed tone, her knuckles tightening on her cup, her level of frustration simmering to a boil, "but not that. It wasn't like a moment of precognition that I could feel and act on instinct guided by the Force. No! What he did came out of nowhere, like a silent knife in the back. It's...I don't know how else to say it, but it was like he cheated, or did something so far beyond anything I have yet to know of."

On a whim, caught up in her trauma and emotions, Amare boldly decided to press the ultimatum she had been considering in her head for days. She was done with her old ways. It was time to drive a hard bargain, or Thane be damned.

"If there's knowledge of this that you know how to counter, or there's something about this the holocrons are holding back from me, I need to know it, and I need to know it now. Not tomorrow, not next month after surviving another harrowing adventure. No more holding back. No more half-measures or expecting me to wing it and figure it out on my own through sheer talent or dumb luck. That power and discipline you and Bomoor carry; I want that. I need that, or New Alderaan will happen to me again, and I cannot live with more shame like that. Never again! We either go all the way with our Sith training from now on, or I walk."

Thane let Amare speak without interrupting, thoughtful. His awareness moved before he answered, as he cautiously examined their surroundings. The traders still argued in low voices and the family remained absorbed in their meal, one child laughing softly at a holoscreen. A server passed behind them without pause.

No one was watching. No one understood.

His focus settled fully back on her. He studied her in silence. His thumb brushed the table’s edge. At his side, the hilt of his own lights are shifted a fraction with his posture. There was the faintest delay in the motion.

He felt it, as he had done increasingly done so. He had take it apart, tuned it, adjusted It, cleaned it - even replaced parts. But, something still resisted him, and he could not quite understand it. It was beginning to feel almost as though he were using someone else's weapon, which had always sat uneasily with him.

He decided to ignore it.

"Good," he said quietly. "You are beginning to see it." He leaned back slightly, fingers loosely interlaced. His mind wandered to Caanus, to his first brush with the Cult as a child. "Axion is not like others we face or might face, even in his own cabal. He's no warlord or politician. He's not a Jedi, Sith or even anything in-between. What you encountered was other... like... Like a pressure. By the time you understand it, the outcome is already decided." A brief glance to the viewport, then back. "You felt that, I think."

He lifted his glass, then set it down again without drinking.

"I have given you what I judged necessary," he said with a slight sigh of resignation. "Power. Instinct. Adaptation. That has carried you this far. But, you're right. It is not enough for what comes next. For what we intend to do... What we must do." There was another pause whilst he examined her as he spoke. "I misjudged the pace - and I misjudged you."

There was no apology, however. Only a correction.

"You are not something to be hardened through repetition. That was expedient before, perhaps. It is no longer sufficient, clearly." His gaze held hers steady. "I do not believe the holocrons are withholding anything from you, not truly. So far, you have largely relied on instinct because it has worked, blended with the teachings and trials I've thrown at you, I grant. But, what you faced - what you will face - does not yield to instinct alone."

His fingers tapped once against the table, eyes briefly drawn to a serving droid straying too close to their table.

"Deception. Indirection. The shaping of perception. That is where his strength lies. And, we all accept, yours does, too. So, when we return to the ship, we open the Telos Holocron together, and interrogate it if we must. You will choose your teachers. There are gatekeepers within it who do not value the blade, and they will surely respond to you more readily. Alchemy. Ritual. The colder paths. The type of power that does not need to announce itself."

He then resumed jabbing at his meal with the utensils, with precise, economical motions, remembering where they were and aping the necessary action.

"I will refine what you already possess," he added. "The blade and the structure of the Force and your relationship to it, but there are paths you will walk without me. Must walk without me." His gaze finally lifted again, golden eyes searching the dark depths of Amare's. "And you will walk them well."

Thane's acceptance of Amare's demands went over far better than she expected. Her shoulders relaxed, she slipped against her chair a little, and the feel of Thane's sincerity almost made her want to shed a few tears of relief. The moment was deeply emotional for her, and she allowed herself a deep sigh from the weight lifted from her. Her burdens were still strong, but she was no longer feeling perilously close to insanity.

"I'll admit," she said softly with a barely-there warm smile, "there are times I felt you didn't understand me, or bothered to care. I've felt so adrift for so long following you, enjoying the thrills, captivated by all the wondrous things I've learned, feeling my powers grow, but I just didn't know how to tell you just how lost I felt at times. I didn't want to put you on the spot like that just now, but it seemed to me that keeping my silence was a lie of omission. I can't speak for all Nautolans, but I was raised to tell the truth to those I trust, and there is no one in this galaxy that I trust more than you."

Thane listened without interruption, his expression unchanged, though something in his focus sharpened slightly as she spoke.

"I understand more than you think," he said simply. A brief pause, then, as he thought carefully about how to prese this. "I... do not always show it."

"You have this unwavering focus that I admire," Amare went on as she absently toyed with her food, subtle blushing appearing in her cheeks. "You're a man on a mission and you deserve to claim justice when the enemy is finally at your mercy. This is good, and Bomoor is lock-step in touch with that in the same way. You both have an understanding that I'll never know. The truth is...I want that with you more than anything, but I'm not deluded enough to expect it because every instinct I have says that you cannot give it. The only thing I can do is accept the fact that I'm your edge, and I need to be sharpened, and no one else can do that but you. I only ask you one favor."

Thane had listened quietly and thoughtfully. Amare clearly had more to say, and he had to admit, a part of him was humbled by the nature of her commentary. Sometimes, he could be drawn away from their master-apprentice relationship, and remember their proximity in age. There was much he admired about her - but he was not blind to what she was becoming, or his part in that.

"Just one?"

"Can we enjoy this together, just for a little while?" she asked with a gesture to their meals and their surroundings and a voice that hearkened back to the kindness of Zaracoda, only this time it came from a genuine place of sincerity, a frail flicker of light gleaming through the bitter black darkness. "No Force. No pain. No demands. No friends around. Just...us? Keeping each other company. Just this once? I'll never ask such a thing from you ever again. I just want to look at the stars with someone I trust before we reach the point of no return. Please?"

Thane did not feel he could answer straight away, his mind processing all that had been said. His gaze drifted past her again, toward the viewport, but it unfocused as his awareness shifted elsewhere. The Force stirred, subtle and instinctive, brushing against the room and then further, as if testing the edges of something he could not quite name.

Coruscant surfaced first. The similar request she had made there, and how had eventually tried. Bomoor then followed, steady and constant, the familiarity of that bond grounded in shared purpose rather than spoken need. Master Sotah after that, quieter still, measured and patient in a way Thane had not fully understood at the time.

And, then, Loren.

His fingers tightened slightly against the table, the artificial digits and metal adornments almost silent within his glove. For a moment, the pull of it threatened to widen. The sense of connection, of something human and unguarded, set against what he was becoming. What he had chosen to become. What he had done to her because of those choices.

The awareness contracted again, deliberately, and he looked back at her.

"No," he said at last, calm and certain. "It is not unreasonable." A brief pause followed, his eyes holding hers. The words he had said were quiet, but carried some weight and sentiment. His gaze then flicked down to the plates between them, largely untouched, then back again.

"Neither of us seem particularly invested in this performance." There was the faintest trace of dry observation in it, colder than the humour he once had, he quickly reflected to himself. "I am aware the station runs a shuttle circuit through the rings." He rose then, smooth and composed, lifting his cloak from the back of the chair and settling it across his shoulders with precise economy. "The view will be clearer there - and I would see it." A small pause as he let his eyes settle on her, examining her, and a gentle smile just about spread across from the corner of his mouth. "With you."

It was a decent and solemn agreement that carried no innuendo or prelude to further expressions of feelings or thought, but rather something meaningful and empowering. Amare had not realized it right away, but the silence they shared observing the stars was, in a sense, her next lesson. The Sith were not merely focused on power for power's sake, but for directing it towards the greater whole. The grand expanse of space was vast and seemingly endless, but Thane could see that it was the space betwixt the stars that drew Amare's attention.

She and Thane exchanged gazes at one point, not in the romantic sense, but in a deeper mutual understanding, and thus the lesson became clear to his apprentice. Amare "spoke" her gratitude to him in the gentle swirls of her eyes, dark pools of calm concealing the approaching storm that stirred within her. The moment was almost Nautili in nature, the aquatic lexicon of her people dominant in facial expression and body language rather than words.

As Thane began the next difficult phase of Amare's training, his apprentice later came to her own conclusion of she had seen on that commerce station:

For all that the Force reflected in its existence, it had long been divined by the wise and learned that in the beginning, there was only darkness. And in all things that subsists within the light, the same truth would forever stand the test of time...

...in the end of all things, light shall fold back to darkness, life shall yield to death, and the reign of the abyss is timeless and inevitable. Death itself was inevitable.

It was a basic natural truth that she had once been content to accept, for it was the way of things. Nothing more. Nothing less. For that which the Force gaveth, it taketh away in equal measure. All things in balance.

As hopeless as it seemed to believe otherwise, therein lurked in her mind a cold hook of nerve, blood, and selfish genes that dared to look at the inevitable end of life and say one simple, yet powerful word to that which was death, to speak the truest stance of all worthy Sith Lords, to look death in the cosmic eyes and declare in raw defiance...

Never.

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