Outside Looking In

Title Outside Looking In
Rating PG-13

Maintain a calm exterior. Be enigmatic, mysterious, inscrutable. Keep up the illusion. Don't let anyone in.

These were the first lessons she remembered, ones that were repeated throughout her training. Ones at which she excelled.

Only when faced with him did she fail. No one knew what - or who - she was, save for him. He knew her every thought and emotion. Behind her impenetrable façade, he controlled them.

She would occasionally try to picture portals in her mind, doors behind which she could lock herself safe away from any intrusion. To keep him out of her thoughts. It was a technique that had worked for her when faced with Lord Vader. That fool thought himself near invincible yet could not sense her, did not know who she was, what her role in his future downfall would be. But in the presence of the Emperor, those mental doorways were as substantial as smoke.

The party guests were being encouraged to leave, most of them more than happy to be out of the presence of the alien amongst them. Thrawn may be a tactical genius, but to the xenophobes and bigots of the Imperial Court, he would always be an inferior. An outsider. Like her.

Her master did not so much as look in her direction but she could feel him tear into her mind and implant a single command against which she was powerless.

"Come."

No evidence of the invasion of her mind showed on her face, she simply turned and walked towards the inner sanctum while the hangers-on were ushered out. Even though they were sycophants and bigots, these people were the closest things she had to a circle of companions. And yet she was a lie in their midst, she was constantly working, continually evaluating their loyalty to Palpatine. She was always on the outside.

Thrawn's promotion ceremony was just beginning as she entered the antechamber and she stayed back, unnoticed, outside of the main group. The Emperor had brought her in to do just that, to stay outside of events and watch.

She never knew why, not until later when he would take the information he wanted directly from her mind leaving her ravaged and empty inside, but this was what she did.

Always on the outside, looking in.