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[clan_techie]

Techie, honestly, had no idea why he'd been spared when a squad of elite stormtroopers and the First Order's boogeyman himself had arrived and dismantled MaMa's clan with a sort of brutal efficiency. Definitely cleaner than when MaMa had initially taken over that corner of the galaxy.

But there he was, cuffed in the back of a troop transport, and he wasn't sure if that was better than dead or not. He tilted his head so that he could rub at the corner of his eye with the knuckle of his index finger. The augmentations had been badly installed and never really properly maintained, and now, out of range of MaMa's mainframe, he felt a little blind. He could still see, sure, and had infrared and x-ray and a handful of other spectrum scans, but he could only see what he was looking at, no longer connected to the entire compound's security cameras.

Essentially he was back to being just a single person when he'd gotten used to being an entire compound.

It was something that made him feel very small and very, very alone.

He also had no way of knowing that the raid had been specifically to rescue him, and that was because he had no idea just how important he actually was. Certainly he knew about his resemblance to the First Order's General, but MaMa had always said that the only reason anyone would come for him was if said General needed a decoy, which was what he was chiefly concerned about at the moment, gnawing on a thumbnail.

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[clan_techie]

Even while the medics worked, and he answered their questions as best he could, though as often as not the answer was a cautious 'I don't know', his gaze kept returning to her. She was his new constant, and while he was definitely still afraid of her on some level, the anxiety had spiked upon arrival in medical even despite the fact that it wasn't what he'd been expecting.

Even when she bade the staff leave the underlying fear was still there, though it had been all along and it was unlikely that it was going to ease anytime soon, though his own room and regular meals were a good start.

He was surprised when the helmet came off, and moreso by her actual face. Enough so in fact that he hadn't actually processed what she was saying right away, which was in turn why it took him a moment to reply, brow furrowing again and finally asking: "If I'm not going to be a decoy, why am I here? I don't know anything. I wasn't in charge of anything. MaMa let me have access to the compound's feeds, the internal holonet, but I always knew where I wasn't allowed to watch."

[umbraeternam]

When Kylo felt his surprise she wondered what he had expected. Not enough to ask but enough that she was curious. It also idly made her wonder what stories and rumors about her might be drifting through the galaxy. She knew that with each passing day there were fewer who knew her true origins, and those who knew the name she was born with were either forbidden to speak of it or didn't care to.

"Just because a person isn't allowed to do something doesn't mean they actually refrain from doing it." she remarked, more of a general statement than anything else.

To be honest, she wasn't certain of the best way to go about answering his questions, or how much she should divulge. Should Hux be the one to reveal the truth? Would he want to, or would he rather some of the truth be shared before they saw each other? Ultimately, did it matter?

"Perhaps I'm just curious about you." she began, which was in and of itself a truth. "Need the leader of the First Order have a deeper reason for doing something?" Slightly tilting her head, she regarded him for a moment. "Tell me your story. Where did you come from before that compound was made your home?" It seemed better to figure out what he knew or recalled of his early life than to start throwing unexpected information at him.

[clan_techie]

He was torn between wanting to protest that he wouldn't do any such thing and not wanting to contradict her, even if the initial comment had merely been idle observation.

Luckily he was saved from having to make a decision when she actually answered his question and asked one of her own, though it didn't lessen his puzzlement any, rubbing at the corner of an eye again, apparently a nervous tic as much as it was an attempt to alleviate the irritation of the implants, "She bought me off of some slavers." He replied, "I'd already lost one eye, blow to the head they think, and the other one wasn't far behind, some kind of infection."

It was the story he'd been told often enough that he'd accepted it as the truth, didn't remember any other version of it, occasionally there were flickers of memory, nightmares of pain and fear with no real source that he could tell, and he had no recollection of the fact that MaMa and her people had been responsible for both the blow to the head and the loss of his actual eyes, or the fact that those two things were ultimately unrelated.

[umbraeternam]

Kylo quietly hummed a thoughtful noise as she listened. What he told her was simple, very simple. The kind of simplicity that was close enough to be a true possibility that some wouldn't question it.

Not that she thought he was lying. Quite the opposite. She doubted he would lie to her, especially after coming from the sort of environment he had. Lies earned punishment in those sorts of worlds and while that might not be exactly what earned those scars he had, she recognized conditioning when she saw it, even if it was of the crude variety. No, she imagined what he was telling her was his truth, what he believed and had been led to. She could find out what he did actually remember of his early years -- if he remembered anything -- but in this instance peering into another's mind felt like it would be a dash of cruelty and clearly the young man had been through enough. Aside from the fact she could just imagine how Hux would react if she put those particular abilities of hers to use, even if she was kind about it.

"Interesting." Which it was, to an extent, and her tone certainly wasn't patronizing. "So you were quite young then, I imagine. If you don't really recall much of what came before you were at the compound."

[clan_techie]

He made a quiet sound of agreement, nodding, "Yeah, I was always small, but I was definitely young, not even six or seven yet, I don't think." Depending on whether MaMa's band had captured him themselves or if there were actually slavers in the mix beforehand, he would have been four or five, six at the oldest.

"Sometimes I think I remember..." He shook his head then, one sharp movement, almost a twitch in and of itself, as if shaking off that line of thought, "Sometimes I think I was somewhere else, but if I was just somebody's debt being paid it doesn't matter." There was something like resignation in his tone. That, too, was something he'd been told often enough, that before MaMa he wouldn't have amounted to anything, since he'd been used to pay off someone's debt.