#its compelling

OK SO. it starts like this:

same as the imperial agenty storyline, fake defection, ardun kothe uses the restraints to keep cyresk/six from betraying the republic, hurting his team, telling anyone else about the code, etc.

cyresk, naturally, is not okie dokie about this. but hes also not entirely surprised that the empire did this to him, because he does not actually work for the empire. he works for csilla. classic chiss "i sure wish the empire hadn't found csilla" moment. but he is ALSO the guy who volunteered to be mindwiped to infiltrate the empire, so at least this isn't his first rodeo. if you held him at gunpoint and forced him to be honest, getting his memory messed with was WAY easier, so this is worse. like, way worse. he doesn't know what he's missing from before, that was a different person to him. the keyword happens TO him and he gets vertigo and nosebleed and blacks out if he his thoughts veer too close to breaking his orders.

he is pretty freaked out, but rather than break his restraints, his priority is to turn them to his advantage. if he has to be helpless, he's going to weaponize it in any way he can. it means losing and losing and losing more to these bastards, but he can avoid ardun kothe and in the meantime make a plan.

and his plan is this: get friends. get them fast.

beause he's just a defector, and he doesn't even LIKE the empire. he'll say so under the restraints and everything, because it's the truth. he is genuinely upset about the restraints and had no idea they existed. these are truths. he does not like telling the truth (he HATES being honest, but this type of honesty where he has no say in the matter is the worst he's ever experienced) but it's going to have to be his weapon, because ardun fucking kothe can ask him if he lies, and he will have to answer honestly.

so, truths AND friends. fine.

he befriends the strike team. and he has to try to play it as honestly as he can, because again, he can't lie here. this sucks for him. he likes lying and hes very good at it, but he sticks to basic truths: the empire controlled him without his knowledge, they wanted to use him like a puppet, they wanted to take his free will. republic outlaws slavery, therefore, they wont do that to him. (except that they are doing that to him.)

he tries to fit in. he tries to be genuine. it comes off stilted and he can honestly say its because he's been mindwiped before. he doesn't remember who he was, and this new version of him post-csilla is still.. learning. growing. becoming a person. that's an easy idea for the republic to swallow. suitably sympathetic. guy who woke up and didn't have a choice, didn't know what he was getting into, doesn't know why his past self did this -- its even true.

he gets into a wildly toxic and high stakes game of oneupmanship with hunter that he is constantly losing. he has no power here, and hunter is not shy about using his keyword like a leash. like a rope to strangle him. and he likes to make it seem as if cyresk has done it to himself, which he can't abide. so he loses, and loses, and loses these confrontations over and over again, and he plans.

mission wise, he saves chance, even though he could have killed him for using the codeword. its all about garnering goodwill. guilt. anything that he can use. its about proving he's a person to these people who use his restraints. for all the republic says it doesnt allow slavery, they are allowing this, and they want to keep it quiet. so naturally, he wants to drag it into the light.

he has some odd conversations with wheels about the nature of free will and how its simple to obey orders. he cant mention his restraints outright, but there are things he can do. hunter doesn't get the keyword until hoth, but you know he uses it more than he needs to. for simple things, for stupid things, to piss cyresk off, to see the light leave his eyes. cyresk kisses him to shut him up sometimes, and hunter uses the keyword to make cyresk kiss him, but that's the extent of things there. cyresk is at this point an interesting and idle fascination, someone to bat around and see what happens -- but he's leashed. collared. and that takes some of hunters interest away because no matter what, in the end, cyresk is going to lose. and he does, always, consistently, because hunter makes sure of it. and of course, he's not allowed to talk about those moments.

so if he's seen commisesrating with wheels, wheels may ask, how do you know what its like to be a droid? i'm not allowed to discuss it. just repeats that phrase every time something about the restraints would come up. wheels remarks that its odd to saber, and we're off to the races. hunter wont bring it up. kothe thinks theres no other choice. wheels may not know its wrong. but saber? chance? they may go to bat for him, especially after he saves chance's life.

saber, at least, seems completely blind to what the restraints can be used for. the potential for abuse. how dark things could get. it wouldn't take much to kick off, depending on how well he ingratiated himself, because the squad KNOWS about his restraints. they all have the keyword in case of emergency.

he'll take his shot as soon as he can. kiss hunter in the hallway, of his own free will for once, and not just to shut hunter up and stop him from using his keyword. make sure it happens in front of saber. she congratulates him later, asks if he and hunter are dating. and his answer?

i'm not allowed to discuss it.

im just saying, it would set off my alarm bells. i would wager it sets off saber's, too. trying to get him to answer just results in more of the same. it looks bad. really bad. so she calls in kothe. tells him something is wrong. tells him she think the restraints were used... unethically. off mission. that she found cyresk kissing hunter and he can't talk about it.

this leads to kothe using the code and cyresk being trapped in his own head again, but this time, this ONE time, its what he wants. its according to plan. he can't lie like this, not even if he wanted to. so when he's asked if hunter has abused his keyword? yes. has hunter taken advantage of him? yes. has hunter kissed him without his consent? yes. he can't lie. and worst: does he have proof?

yes. yes he does.

and he slides a little recording device out of his pocket and over to kothe. because as soon as he realized this was the play he was going to have to make, he decided to record himself at base. its a small device, and he has never taken it off world, but its enough. it has proof of hunter using the codeword as often as he pleases. it has an incident of hunter using the codeword to make him kiss him -- although not the incident that saber saw, because he orchestrated that himself.

and kothe is tired. so tired. he's an ex-jedi, he already felt these restraints were necessary but horrible. hes using them anyways though, and now this makes it a more immediate dilemma. they cant take the key phrase back. hunter has it. the squad has it. cyresk is compromised.

only, that's not going to be true for long. some questioning forces cyresk to admit that he took the IX serum. and its either going to work or kill him very, very soon. he will be unbrainwashable or his brain is going to melt out of his ears. and he thought this was NECESSARY. that the REPUBLIC drove him to this, not the empire. and i think that would realllllly hurt ardun kothe, and the rest of the team. you know chance is drowning in guilt after cyresk saved him.

(in my canon, i suppose, I want to say that the IX serum has a chance of working, or a chance of outright killing you. it takes between 3 and 30 days to rewire your brain, and once its done, if you live, you would need to invent an entirely new kind of mental conditioning because the new way your brain works prevents it from working.)

anyways the team gets THIS information too and of COURSE if you dont want this to be true, you pull in hunter. to defend himself. and he of course is like well fuck. i may have just been made. tries to get cyresk to admit to setting him up with the keyword and it backfires. because cyresk is. well. hes banned from honeypot missions for a REASON.

something along the lines of he finds hunter thrilling because he makes him so afraid. like being chased through the woods by a murderer. he hates hunter for it but his wires are crossed and he also wants to simultaneously kiss and kill him.

which is obviously not the answer hunter wants. and not at all the answer the others want.

and at this point serum IX kicks in because this is my story and i love the dramatic timing of hunter trying to salvage the situation and it escalates because cyresk just collapses bleeding from the nose and eyes. like thats bad. not supposed to happen.

when he DOES wake up hes in the hosptial. at night. hunter is there. and hes MUCH more interested now than he was before. because he never really, truly expected the cipher agent to be able to turn this situation around on him. never thought his cover with the republic would be compromised. so hunter isnt really actually interested until cyresk throws off the mind control and destroys his cover, getting an upper hand he NEVER should have been able to get, at which point its like. nuclear level toxic yaoi. they would make each other worse.

cyresk trying to kill hunter for revenge with varying levels of success and vice versa and they do kiss about it. but also they are trying to stab each other. it is what it is. its unhinged and its not going in the mission reports. enemies to worse enemies type of relationship. great banter but its all one-upping each other until one of them gets shot for sure.