Inside the Agent’s Lounge, there’s the comforting drone of conversation, the clink of glasses and the scrape of chairs on the durasteel floor, a little music, and an air of almost normalcy. Here, agents can mingle and relax; they can be themselves beyond the weight and responsibility of titles and designations and roles. It’s not crowded all the time like it is now - sometimes, it’s the one place in Headquarters that’s completely deserted - but between the hours of 1500 and 2300, it’s a bustling and cheerful, if generally well-mannered, establishment.
Inside the Agent’s Lounge, there is a staircase. It climbs the back wall, but no one really talks about it, because it wraps over the memorial and everyone already knows where it goes.
As a brand new Cipher, you know too, but you haven’t drummed up the courage to visit the Cipher’s Lounge yet.
It’s the exclusive part of this little section of Headquarters - Ciphers or invitation-only. That’s an understood rule; no one will throw you out if you’re graceless enough to ascend as a regular agent, but everyone observes it out of respect.
Ciphers aren’t like other agents. No one can understand an agent like another agent … but no one understands Ciphers except their own.
It’s said that a Cipher’s lifespan is five years. It’s a literal statement, and you know this, but the prestige, respect, the prospect of independence, and the secrecy and excitement wouldn’t let you say no - even if you could. You feel you can beat the odds. You’re good, and you’re resilient, in a way a lot of other people aren’t.
But the memorial on the back wall and the slight, but discernable, hush whenever someone does climb the staircase tell you that other agents notice the darker aspects of the Cipher’s life.
Or maybe it’s just the fame, you tell yourself. There are a few Cipher agents you’re still nervous about meeting in person.
The memorial is subdued, yet elegant. Crafted from rare starstone, it’s polished to a surface so smooth and frictionless your fingers seem to bead and slide off like water. It resembles an expanse of the galaxy itself - deep, rich black and glinting matter-of-factly with twinkling stars and the blue-purple iridescence of nebulae and stardust. No one piece of the stone is like any other, and it seems to change in the reflection of the lounge’s lighting as you walk around the room.
Set deeply into the stone wall and contrasting sharply with the darkness are glittering white crystals carved into faceted eight-pointed stars. They’re large, for a crystal, each about the size of your palm, and they refract the light into tiny sparks and flickers of rainbow. Rumor has it that each one is a rare Durindfire gem from Tatooine, but Intelligence has never issued an official statement regarding what they are or where they’re mined from. It’s one of the many closely-held secrets you’ve yet to learn, and there are whisperings that they may have some kind of faint Force signature. Regardless, there’s no way for you to tell, and Intelligence has shown no indication of confessing to anything. This is one secret to which they cling tightly, and the Sith either aren’t fully aware or don’t care.
But it is clear that Intelligence takes their memorial seriously.
Live fully. Love deeply. Serve completely.
You know it’s not true, but it almost feels like it, when you press your palm to the hard coolness of one of the starcrystals and a hologram of a Cipher appears.
You don’t know this one, and there are no names. But as you’re still getting used to the loss of your own name, you find it’s oddly appropriate - removed from the cold, impersonal Cipher designation, the image is probably the closest you can get to the real person behind the number. Someone remembers them. You have friends who know by heart which stars belong to their Ciphers. Both MIA and KIA have made it here, and the occasional regular granted honorary-Cipher status in recognition of some monumental, final act.
At the bottom of the wall, you find the traditional Cipher non-farewell:
Until we meet again … On the other side of tomorrow.
Perhaps a bit of superstition. Ciphers never say goodbye. But they know. You’ve yet to really know like they do. Still, you’ve heard this before, and some regular agents have adopted the phrase, or variations thereof. Everybody wants to come back, someday.
Walking away from the wall, you still feel optimistic. But it’s a sobering, melancholic reminder and there is still plenty of space on the wall.
You just hope that, perhaps one day - a long time from now - you will have made enough of an impact to be granted an immortal star of your own.
>>>>> Cipher Memorial Wall <<<<<
(cLICK THE LIIIINK and mouse-over the stars!)
So this was kind of an experiment, but I’ve been mulling over this concept for a while and decided I finally had to do something about it.
To get a place for your Cipher on the wall, send me a high-res screenshot and their name!!
Must be an MIA/KIA Cipher.
The MIA/KIA can occur at any point in your Cipher’s story, even if it hasn’t “officially” happened yet.
As long as they are MIA/KIA from Imperial Intelligence’s official perspective, it’s fine! In other words, if your Cipher faked their death or appears dead or missing in Intel records, I’ll still make a star for you. :)
No regular, non-Cipher agents, unless they went MIA/KIA during some great, above-and-beyond service to Intelligence or the Empire. In that case, they are granted honorary Cipher status.
Please send me your Ciphers so I can recognize them, and reblog to spread the woooord.
I feel weird not including the Cipher names in the memorial, but given the forbidden real name thing (and possible still-living relatives), it seems most appropriate to go without. I’m mulling over ideas to include them in a non-obvious way so people can learn who your Cipher is/was, but I haven’t gotten there yet.
This is totally my own Cipher headcanon, but please feel free to adopt/adapt the concept to use for yourself. :)
(If this doesn’t work so well on mobile, I’m sorry in advance, but I got nothin’ I frakenstein all my code. XD Also it’s pretty dark, so I don’t know how it’ll turn out on other monitors.)
