suitably_heroic | Nar Shaddaa, The Day After A Drinking Binge (Reply)

Atton	"I don't understand what that accomplished," Atton said, "But if it makes you feel better, fine."
Meetra	Meetra pulled upright and cast a final, reassuring smile at the man she had just healed. The man had been grossly misinformed about his illness and how easy it was to treat it - she was hardly going to take guff from Atton about doing a good deed. She turned away. "Thanks for your vote of confidence," she said. "We're almost there." He'd shown up with a hangover in the morning, but he'd been more or less as manageable as he had ever been since. She wasn't sure what he'd been doing, but as long as he wasn't moping around the Ebon Hawk again, she wasn't sure she minded.
Atton	"Fine," Atton said, trailing after her. Truth be told, he didn't exactly mind the reminder that she was a good person, if nothing else. And it wasn't like he really had trouble parsing naked altruism, even if he did suspect some kind of ulterior motive. But after last night, it was finally starting to dawn on him just how weird his life was getting. It might've made him a little reactionary.
Meetra	Meetra came to a stop eventually, right by the side of an old airspeeder. It looked a little banged up but functional. She patted it. "We found this yesterday," she said. "It looks like it was abandoned. I've been trying to unlock the controls, but with no luck."
Atton	... and so she'd decided to come to him for help? That was... kind of touching, actually. After certain things had been Said yesterday, Atton had been sure she thought he wasn't worth nothing after all. He'd take this in the spirit of reconciliation it seemed like it was offered. "Hey," he said, letting down his reactionary-defensive front. "Let me take care of that for you."
Meetra	Okay. Good. They'd be able to make this work, then. Meetra hoped. She smiled at him. "I thought I'd let the expert handle it," she said.
Atton	"Expert?" Atton echoed. "I like the sound of that." She could call him that more often. Or something. Ah-- time to stop messing around. He squatted by the airspeeder and hotwired the controls. Just a couple of wires. Pure pazaak, no problem. "So have you figured out what we're planning to do yet?"
Meetra	Right. He'd missed a few things. Meetra took a deep breath. "I think the key to finding Zez-Kai Ell lies with the Exchange," she said. "We've been poking around, trying to get their attention." Explosively. "They seem to have a firm grip on the refugee sector -- bullying refugees, getting them to pay 'protection' money and forcing them into slavery," she added.
Atton	Atton frowned at her. "Tussling with the Exchange?" he said dubiously. "You sure that's a good idea? They run a lot on this moon."
Meetra	"One, if anyone knows where Zez-Kai Ell is, it'll be them," Meetra pointed out, stepping into one of the seats on the speeder. "And two, they put a bounty on my head. I want to know why."
Atton	Atton slipped into the seat beside her. "Fine, fine," he said, "If you want to court death, who am I to stop you?"
Meetra	Meetra leaned against the side of her seat. "Take us to the entertainment promenade," she said. "We have a pazaak den to visit." She was quiet for a while as Atton got the speeder up and moving, pulling away from the solid platform of the refugee sector. Quiet, but thinking. "Look, I need you on this team," she said. "But if we're going to be travelling together, I need to know about your past. Just so we won't be getting any surprises."
Atton	Poodoo. Here they went again. And now there she was, making assumptions about the longevity of his stay. True assumptions, but still. "Well, don't get too attached to me," Atton muttered. "I don't like it."
Meetra	Was he saying he wasn't planning to stick around? "I don't think you've liked one thing we've done since we met on Peragus," Meetra said, shooting a quick glance in his direction. "Why not?"
Atton	"Because I'm a deserter," Atton said. He didn't meet her glance. Had to keep his eyes on the road, see. "That's what I do."
Meetra	"You served in the war?" Meetra prompted.
Atton	He thought about telling her nothing. She didn't need to know - or deal - with that. "Served in both of them," Atton said at last, reluctantly. "Against the Mandalorians, before and after Revan, and again..." He hesitated. Just for a fraction of a second. "...When Revan declared war on the Jedi."
Meetra	"But why?" she stressed. She'd been there for the Mandalorian Wars. That one she could understand. Not for the other one. The other one... Damn it, why the other one?
Atton	"Because I followed orders," Atton said simply. Except that was too simple, wasn't it? He let another ship pass them by and chewed on it. Yeah. Too simple. "But it was more than that," he said slowly. "You were there, you know how easy it was to hate the Jedi who sat back in the Republic 'evaluating' the threat... watching us die against the Mandalorians."
Meetra	Meetra had never let it get that far. She couldn't. That would've been too much-- but she thought of Atris' face as the Jedi Master riled against her about going to war at all, and she understood. "So why did you desert?"
Atton	"Because you can't believe in the Republic anymore after the Mandalorian Wars," Atton said. "After Revan, nothing was the same." That part, she'd missed. "Right after that final battle at Malachor, I was right there with the rest of the defectors. Because it was the right thing to do." And no screaming match with Anakin or Sia could convince him otherwise.
Meetra	"Republic soldiers take an oath, Atton," Meetra said, shutting her eyes and rubbing at her forehead. "That was wrong. You answered war with war." As soon as the words left her mouth, the irony struck her - Atris had said the same to her.
Atton	"No, it wasn't," Atton said tiredly. Hoped this wouldn't turn into one of those screaming matches. He was taking a chance here - a chance somebody other than Sparkle wanted to listen to his side of the story. He didn't exactly want to regret it. "We needed the Jedi during the Mandalorian Wars, more than anything. The Mandalorians were slaughtering us by the millions. The millions." Blood-soaked bodies of friends lining the walls. A hole in the head of a kid Atton's age - a kid that had a damn sight more right to hit 28. And all those other people he never saw. "You were there at Serroco, when they turned the Stereb cities into glass craters. At Duro, when basilisk war droids rained like meteors onto the orbiting cities, and when the Mandalorians set fire to the Xoxin plains on Eres III - those fires still burn, Meetra." He shook his head. "Without the Jedi who turned on the Council, without you, the Republic would have lost the war, and we'd all be Mandalorian slaves or corpses."
Meetra	How had it all gone so far off the rails, she wondered. Once upon a time everything had seemed so clear - listening to Atton right now, though, it was... They'd gotten so far off the path. "That's still no reason to start another war against the Republic and end even more lives," Meetra pointed out softly.
Atton	"We were loyal to Revan," Atton said. "That was enough. He saved us." That'd been crystal clear.
Meetra	She stared down at her hands, trying to process all this. It was one thing to hear about the history from afar - now it inched dangerously close towards her own experiences. "So you followed Revan, too," she said. "Just as I did."
Atton	"Yeah," Atton said, and he thought about leaving it at that. No details. This was all he owed her, and then some. "After Malachor, after the Mandalorian Wars, that's when the Sith teachings started spreading through the ranks," he said. "We knew where our loyalties lay - to the Jedi who came to help us, not the ones sat back on Dantooine and Coruscant, watching us die. So when those same Jedi who watched us die decided to start fighting us during the Jedi Civil War, well, we fought back." A pause. "I fought back."
Meetra	Meetra's mouth quirked a little. "The idea of you fighting Jedi is ridiculous," she said. Thugs and Mandalorians, yes. Jedi... no.
Atton	Atton's mouth quirked, too, but there was no kindness in his smile. "That's why I was so good at it," he said. He took in a deep whiff of horrible Nar Shaddaa air. "I killed Jedi. A lot of them," he said. "People say killing Jedi is hard. It's not. You just have to be smart about it. No blasters, no getting close to them, no attacking them directly when you can take down their allies instead. There's ways of gassing them, drugging them... making them lose control... torturing them. I was really good at it." Poodoo. Was he actually saying all this to her? Could he even get away with that--? The look on her face offered him no answers. "What's worse is that killing them wasn't the best thing," he admitted quietly. "Making them fall... making them see our side of it, that was the best."
Meetra	"You make it sound easy," Meetra whispered.
Atton	"I thought myself... techniques," Atton said. He couldn't stop now, somehow. Kept rolling out. "It's hard for Jedi to sense what you're really thinking if you throw up walls of strong emotions. Lust, impatience, cowardice... most Jedi awareness doesn't cruise past the surface feelings, to see what's deeper." A decent liar could make anyone believe anything. A great liar could make himself believe it just long enough to fly - could use his reality to bend that of another. "I was good at that, throwing up walls, and my superiors knew it. Sometimes the Jedi on our side didn't even realize I was there."
Meetra	She finally pulled her eyes away from her hands and her attention away from her own inner self and looked at him. "Is that why you act the way you do?" she asked.
Atton	"Part of it," Atton said. He thought. He didn't... "Maybe it was always me. It's hard to tell. I haven't known who I am for years." He gripped the controls tighter. "I wasn't the only one," he said, seguing away from all this. He'd offered up enough, hadn't he? "I know you left at the Mandalorian Wars, so you don't know much about what went on behind the scenes during the Jedi Civil War. But Revan understood one thing - the real battle was going to be fought between the Jedi on both sides. That was the only battle that mattered."
Meetra	"What do you mean?" Meetra asked him.
Atton	"Whoever had the most, the strongest Jedi was going to win the Jedi Civil War," Atton said, making a fluid turn as he spoke. "If Revan couldn't convert Jedi, then Revan would kill them. So Revan trained elite Sith units into assassination squads, whose duty it was to go out and capture enemy Jedi. I was in one of those units."
Meetra	"You said they were assassination squads," Meetra noted thoughtfully. "But you captured Jedi, you didn't kill them."
Atton	"Revan had plans for all Jedi," Atton said. "I think it was important to him that the Jedi saw his side of things. The Sith teachings." He got that one. "Revan wanted to break them. And then have them join him."
Meetra	Meetra studied the twinkling lights of the platform that approached them. "But you're here now," she observed. "Why?"
Atton	He'd told Sparkle that yesterday. First time he'd said it out loud. He wasn't really ready for the second time yet. "One day I decided not to do it anymore, so I left," Atton said lightly. "Ended up on Nar Shaddaa, became someone else."
Meetra	"Why are you telling me this?" Meetra asked him softly, touching his arm for only a moment. "You know I'm a Jedi."
Atton	"Because you've killed Jedi, too," Atton said, ignoring the warmth that seeped - however briefly - into his arm through his jacket. "Different circumstances, but you have a bigger body count than I ever did." He began to slow the speeder down. They were almost there. "And I've been with you for only a short time, but it's enough to know that as soon as anyone signs on with you, they haven't got long to live. You've got history, and anyone who travels with you doesn't." He set the speeder down at the edge of the entertainment sector. He was quiet, at least for that short period of time. Then he sat back. "And maybe I want somebody to know who I was in case a story needs to be set straight. Maybe you understand."
Meetra	"Atton--" she started.
Atton	"We're here," Atton said, climbing out of the spider. "What's this pazaak game you need won?"