#Lothal is the best planet to live on post-empire I will not be taking criticism

[is-that-sand-in-my-waffles]

Kind of messed up and unfair that I'll never be able to live on Lothal and have three Loth-cats and a speeder bike that's custom painted by a certain stunning local artist😕

[egregiousderp]

A little late, and I’m not sure if it’s a pairing or not. Your mileage is up to you on if it’s Kallus/Lyste or Thrawn/Kallus or anything at all.

Imperials anywhere and kittens galore anyway.

Happy Imperial Valentines. This is for @averyimperialvalentines

——– ——–

Lyste is no longer sure what to think.

Most times one is called for a private meeting with a commanding officer, there’s a certain etiquette to follow, a formula.

Thrawn though has an odd habit of calling his inferiors in for seemingly inconsequential things. And Lyste is many things, but art critic isn’t one of them.

Botanist is another thing he isn’t, and he has rather unpleasant memories of Thrawn watching with his glittering red eyes while a gently undulating succulent took offense to his fingers before the Admiral dismissed him with a casual wave of one blue hand and a

‘That will be enough, Lieutenant.’

If anything, spotting Kallus there already only makes it worse.

Kallus has a reputation for a sort of refined brutishness among the officers. Never mixed much. Polite but would probably gut you for a promotion. Coruscanti. Probably connections and old Patriotism and all that. No one really interacted much with him aside from the cadets who got sent to pester him with odd orders on dares from their peers. Lyste had never known Kallus well, even before the incident where he vanished for a full three cycles outside of geonosis, and returned limping. Lyste isn’t high enough up to read agent Kallus’s reports-

-Yet.

He was an example in Lyste’s training. On surprising the enemy with what was available to you, the cleansing of Lasan. Lyste wonders sometimes if Kallus knows it. If he would be proud of it or just pinch his mouth into a line with a look and a line about doing his duty.

No one knows anything about Thrawn, of course.

Kallus frowns at him, doesn’t seem to take well to the scrutiny.

“Yes, Admiral?” Lyste asks.

“I was wondering if you could help me with something, Lieutenant.”

Lyste tensed a little.

“Yes…admiral?”

Thrawn waved a hand.

“This creature.”

Pointed ears, slim legs, bushy tail.

Lyste blinked as the creature gave a harsh yowl at Kallus, hissing. The agent’s nose scrunched in distaste.

“It’s- a lothcat, sir.”

“Agent Kallus has already informed me of its species, Lieutenant Lyste, I was rather hoping for a more dynamic input,” Thrawn drawled so the color crept into Lyste’s ears and he wasn’t sure if the point was to make him feel stupid or not.

“What would you like me to do, sir?”

“Pick it up.”

“I-” Lyste looked at Kallus for help.

“You heard him,” Kallus replied, something pinched in his mouth again.

This was obviously some sort of test.

Lyste looked at the lothcat, and stepped in between it and Kallus, taking off his hat.

“May I ask where it was found? If it’s been…tested for any unusual diseases?” Lyste asked a little nervously.

“You may of course,” Thrawn said, sounding pleased, “This one was found living in one of the settlements on Lothal recently brought under Imperial Control.”

“So…it’s a pet?” he asked, eying the wary animal.

“That is a possibility,” Thrawn drawled.

The creature’s ears were still back, tail puffed out.

Lyste shushed the cat, setting his hat to the side, offering his fingers for a sniff.

The cat’s ears tipped up curiously.

“Has it been checked for identity chips?” Lyste asked.

Thrawn said nothing. His forefinger and thumb bracketing his chin.

Lyste stroked the creature’s ears, scratching under its chin.

“Shhhhh. There there…” he murmured absently, “You just wanted her moved?”

“Her?“ Kallus blinked.

“This…marking type is mostly female,” Lyste faltered, “I…assumed.”

“You assumed correctly in this case. Yes. Pick her up, Lieutenant.” Thrawn murmured.

Lyste carefully scooped up the animal, supporting it. It immediately went for rubbing its oversized head against his uniform, rumbling loud purrs.

“Very interesting, wouldn’t you agree, agent Kallus?”

“I must admit I don’t grasp what’s so interesting here, Admiral,” Kallus replied in his slow, careful way, frowning.

“I had Agent Kallus move the animal from its cage to the table. He chose a grip behind the scruff of the neck, as one might when dealing with something dangerous. It is a technique one would expect from the Empire’s Riot Control Troops.” Thrawn said.

Kallus’s eyes narrowed.

“I’m only doing my duty,” Lyste parroted, catching Kallus’s glare, trying to appease him. It didn’t do to cultivate enemies if one wanted to make higher than lieutenant, higher than acting captain.

“On the contrary, the Empire has need of such as you,” Thrawn drawled.

“…Sir?”

“I have need of a face for a propaganda campaign targeting Lothal. I wish to portray the Empire as not without those capable of gentleness to the frightened, and the displaced.” Thrawn murmured, drawing close to Lyste with measured strides.

“Why- Lothal?” Lyste stuttered.

Thrawn’s blue hand moved out to stroke the ears of the rumbling cat in Lyste’s arms.

“Lothal is important to the Rebels. I’ve reason to believe it isn’t the incompetence of those assigned to Lothal which is to blame for your current difficulty. I wish for the Rebels to know we too are attached to Lothal.”

Thrawn paused, almost dreamy.

“Your birth planet is Garel.”

“I- Yes, Admiral.”

“You were conscripted from the general populace, weren’t you, Lieutenant?”

Lyste halts, looks to Kallus.

Kallus’s chin has firmed up. He nods at him, oddly, as though trying to encourage him, oddly grim, like there’s something more significant at stake.

“I…was, Admiral.”

“Agent Kallus has noted in his reports that you have a special attachment to the planet of Lothal and it’s locals.”

Lyste tenses, hands frozen on the lothcat, staring up at Kallus.

Kallus had the look of a man trying to keep his own job, his own position when faced with the unpredictability that was Thrawn.

He couldn’t really blame him.

“If you mean to say it reminds me of Garel…You’d probably be right,” Lyste hears himself saying, scrutinized by those unnerving red eyes. “We- always had rebel activity. Even when I was a child. I saw- the way it affected those I grew up with. The common people.”

Lyste squares his shoulders.

“Then you side with the empire out of convenience?”

“I believe the Empire has the greater infrastructure to do the best possible good for the common people, Sir. I don’t…regret being conscripted if I can help the people of Lothal. The common people of any world, really.”

He glances again at Kallus, but Kallus is inscrutable.

Thrawn’s strangely curved features lift slightly.

“Then you want to do what is best for your empire.”

“With all my heart, Admiral.” Lyste insists.

Thrawn draws back from him, red eyes fixed on Kallus.

“Agent Kallus, the Empire has need of you as well.”

“Sir?”

Kallus is too crisp, too polished for much uncertainty, but it creeps warily into his tone so even Lyste hears it.

“The Rebels must look like the aggressor. You are familiar with what is required of you, no doubt.”

Kallus’s shoulders square.

“What would you have me do?”

Thrawn smiles. It’s a cold, tight smile.

——–

Lyste’s role, as it turns out, is simple, hold the cat and soothe it while Thrawn directs crew of engineers with lighting staves.

Lyste is not a brilliant man, and he’s aware of this as he contemplates the oddity in Thrawn staring down at agent Kallus, red eyes flickering over him.

“Bring that weapon of yours to me. I’d like to see it in demonstration?”

“Sir?” There’s something uncertain in Kallus’s perfectly groomed face so Lyste almost pities him.

“You are to be our stand-in for a rebel, Agent Kallus. I wouldn’t have you serve in that way at less than your full capability.”

Textbooks, Lyste reflects, don’t do justice to the way Agent Kallus fights. He’s far more flexible for one, than Lyste had ever suspected. Graceful, even. The woken weapon a dancing thing in his hands. He must have been terrible, he thinks, when he was younger.

He’s been stripped of his armor, clad in drab colors, his hair mussed beyond regulation. His movements are weirdly crisp anyway, oddly regulation.

One day, Lyste will be high enough in rank to read the reports of the Imperial intelligence Agency, he thinks.

He will discover one day, long after everything that is to come, that Kallus wrote of him, that he said he’d never seen a man fall so sincerely in love with his posting. Decorous, in line of everything that was to come, his reports careful, and always so polite, revealing nothing.

By then it will be far too late.

A full squad of troopers serve as Agent Kallus’s opponents, closed defensively around Lyste like he’s something precious, with his long-since squirming animal.

Kallus is terrifyingly capable, batting them aside like they’re paper, matching evenly, overpowering the duo of heavy troopers designed to hold him back.

“Harder.” Thrawn intones from the sidelines, taking his holostills, hardly even looking up, “Don’t hold back. He’s a rebel, after all.”

Kallus fights hard, Lyste reflects, drawing back slightly. If anything, the admiral’s urging of the troopers up and at him only makes Kallus fight harder.

He stumbles, falters under a stunning tasp that should bring down a wookie so Lyste feels the breath catch in his chest, feels it catch even harder when Kallus’s golden eyes flick back up to him with an impossible determination and violence, when he goes down to a sonic grenade and pulls himself up impossibly quickly, that smoking golden staff in his hand, Thrawn’s single word in his ears on repeat, urging:

“Again.”

When he stumbles, when Kallus finally falls, Lyste starts breathing again. The agent is less than two feet away, considering some impossible lunge if the deranged look on his polished, perfectly bred face is anything to go on.

Lyste has never been quite so alarmed by one of his superiors being dragged down beneath a good five white-armored bodies, struggling all the way, even exhausted, even dragged to an inch of his endurance.

If Rebels were anything like Kallus, Lyste thinks, half-admiring, half-horrified, they’d never stand a chance.

“Enough.” Thrawn intones lazily, gazing a little too long at Kallus.

Long enough Lyste gets the sense this has nothing to do with him, is some strange power-play instead, between two of his superiors.

Kallus stares at Thrawn hard back, hotly, red-blonde hair mussed and in his eyes.

Thrawn shifts ever so slightly, gazing on him with something approaching interest.

The cat in Lyste’s arms squirms.

“Are you…alright, agent Kallus?” He asks.

“Fine,“ Kallus snaps, pulling himself up, stormtroopers darting away from him like the last one caught touching him will pay with a crack from that awful, alien weapon of his, like his pride is worth violence.

The weapon in his hands doesn’t look anywhere near as menacing and terrible, somehow, when Kallus is in full uniform, with his hair slicked carefully back, Lyste reflects.

“Thank you, Lieutenant Lyste, Agent Kallus, this has all been…quite useful,” Thrawn murmurs, blue hands folded behind his white back.

A needy, mewing pawing catches Lyste’s attention.

“Respectfully, sir, when was the last time this lothcat was fed?” Lyste asks.

“Ah. Yes. You are dismissed, Lieutenant Lyste. Tend to the beast in any way you see fit. You have done a service to your empire.”

Thrawn’s red eyes pass back to agent Kallus, half-bent against the deck plating, all but ignoring him.

Lyste isn’t gifted with an over-abundance of imagination. He leaves quickly, mewling kit still in his arms.