Dels'taron (Background, part 2)

As Dels'taron's speeder approached the Arren Estate, her thoughts turned to the man who waited inside for her. Kaldaras would likely greet her with a warm smile, apologizing for having been called away, and ask if she'd enjoyed the rest of the ball. Though his reputation as a Darth was as formidable as one might expect of the patriarch of a Sith house, he had been charming and affectionate from the moment they'd met. For every misery she'd suffered at Kothe's hand, Kaldaras had shown her only kindness. 

On the night they'd first met, she was playing the role of dutiful wife, arm candy to the esteemed General Kothe at a grand affair of state. While her husband spoke to a small group of party-goers who were as eager to be seen with the right people as he was, Dels'taron's ruby gaze had drifted across the dining hall to a pair of silly socialites whispering to each other and casting not-so-well-hidden glances toward a large muscular human in Sith armor near the entrance.  He stood well over six feet and carried himself confidently as he walked toward a servant carrying a tray full of drinks, and though his dark brown gaze swept briefly in the women's direction, it continued by as though noticing nothing of consequence until it reached the Chiss. 

At first, she had averted her gaze as she'd been taught was appropriate in the etiquette training Kothe had sent her to upon her arrival to Kaas. She tried to follow the conversation her husband was having with the others around them, but to no avail. She had no use for social politics or the latest gossip among the social elite on Kaas. 

Dels'taron was certain the entire room must have been able to see the way the towering Sith continued to stare at her as though she was the only other person in the room, and finally, she felt she had no choice but to look back. In that moment, a silent gauntlet was thrown, and she knew that she could either risk waiting for him to cross the room to her (and be noticed by the general – something she would most definitely pay for later in private) or she could excuse herself and find a safer place to be approached. 

She chose the latter, explaining that she needed some fresh air and slipping away to a quiet balcony that was partially obscured from the view of the party-goers by a heavy brocade tapestry. Barely a moment had passed before Kaldaras was beside her, introducing himself, vowing to steal her away from her prison of a marriage to be his personal attache. Not once during that first meeting did she dare to hope those moonlit promises were more than the fleeting interest in a pretty alien girl, of course, but she indulged the fantasy anyway, enjoying the handsome man's attentions.

She was a widow within a month, and now, she belonged to Darth Kaldaras Arren. She was even engaged again, despite the protests raised by everyone around him (including herself) about protecting his bloodline and his duty to produce Sith heirs. She cared about him deeply, of course. He was her savior and protector, and she would readily serve him until the day he died, but the likelihood that she could give him a force sensitive child was remote. He refused to listen, stubbornly digging in his heels, naming his nephew his heir instead to end the argument.

However, she would never really belong to House Arren quite the way it felt for that fleeting moment during the celebration she'd just left. In that setting, Dels'taron hadn't been the alien or the outsider, and she marveled at the way that sense of belonging had beckoned to her. 

Dels'taron (Background, part 1)

Dels'taron leaned back in the passenger seat of the private speeder, sorting through a myriad of thoughts. Never had she seen so many Chiss in one place, and never had she felt the kind of longing to belong to something greater than herself as she had during the Red Flame ceremony. While her current position within House Arren was one of favor and she was valued highly by Darth Kaldaras, she still felt very much like the outsider who was to be shoehorned into a family she had no real place in.

When she was a child, she'd never thought to ask her parents how they'd come to live among the various alien species that made up the labor force on Au'Daxu or why they were the only Chiss family among their neighbors. It might have occurred to her that they were different if it hadn't been for the circumstances that bound them all together, creating a community among the men and women who were forced to work in the mines. They had all felt the oppressive boot of the Imperial guards equally, and they were all identified with the same terms.

Alien. Scum. Akk dog.

Even years later, the terms could send an internal shudder of rage through her when she wasn't prepared to hear them. By the time she had found herself counted among the rebellious group of youth who were griefing the guards who ran the labor camp, she had already been in trouble half a dozen times for minor offenses ranging from rude gestures to stolen rations.

That's when she had met Colonel Chadwick Kothe, who had been sent to deal with the dangerous rebel uprising that basically consisted of a group of bored, angry children with too much time on their hands while their absentee parents were working twelve hour days in the mines. Dels'taron had the misfortune of being the most recently detained member of the gang of miscreants, and while none of them were really afraid of the guards – having grown up around them and known them for years – the newly-arrived older human in his crisp uniform merely had to level his authoritative brown eyes at the Chiss teenager to make her nervous. It was immediately clear that he would not be as lenient or as forgiving.

Once he had her attention, he knew exactly how to walk the fine line between intimidation and manipulation. She found herself turning on her friends and their families, believing somehow that she was doing what was best for the community as a whole and safeguarding her parents. While she would come to realize years later that she truly had no choice but to comply with the formidable Colonel, she was convinced at the time that she chose willingly to betray everyone she knew, causing the deaths of nearly twenty of the community’s young people before he felt that the 'lesson' had been learned.

Kothe wasn't finished with Dels'taron. Leveraging her willing compliance, he convinced her that it would be in her best interest to go back to Kaas with him, assuring her that he would find her a place in Imperial service. Within the next year, she was also his wife – the pretty blue young alien on the social climbing middle-aged Colonel's arm at every official function – and a different kind of slave.