[ignore the voice in your head.]

7 - What does your character miss the most?

Honestly? I think he misses that exhausted look his mother used to give him… a lot. Because he was… a bit of a handful. They moved around a lot, bouncing from job to job - sometimes world to world - for his mother as she could find employment after the nebulous hole his father left behind in their lives (she’d never talk about it, never tell him more than the man was never present, and he didn’t need to be).

As… tends to happen, her rambunctious teen of a son often told her she worried too much, and gave her the crooked smile to match. Yes, even the day she found out he’d been illegally racing swoopbikes for months without telling her.

He promised he’d stay in touch when he up and enlisted with the Republic SIS. He’s kept sending her parts of his paychecks for years now, but getting into SpecForces put strain on a somewhat already burdened relationship. There’s times he misses coming home with his busted lip and scuffed up knees because he got in the way of the wrong type of crowd trying to make it home from the mechanic’s shop or the tracks, the way she’d tilt his head up and click her tongue in disapproval at him before setting their meager dinner preparations aside to clean him up. It was a gentle and stinging love, all at once. She’d always tell him he was going to get in over his head someday.

I think a part of him sometimes wishes he could tell her, you were right, ma. And it sucks. He’s not… very sure of the man he’s grown into. But his mother's love was unconditional still, despite their imperfections. And he's not entirely lost a younger boy's longing for the galaxy to just make sense. And to be told it's all going to be alright.

14 - Who would your character never betray?

Ough, loredumping warning because this is. This one's got a bit of a loaded answer.

It’s a bit of a contradictory answer, but his core teammates of Havoc Squad come to mean a lot to him. Hyroh (@exeuntlegacy ehehehe new blog tag new blog tag) and Aric have been by his side from the beginning and Elara quickly finds a place among the boys. Even if they drive her to wit’s end sometimes. [Please send her some brandy and maybe get her a raise. She’s dealing with far too much of Their Shit sometimes.]

In short, it’s contradictory because he does, technically, start out betraying all of them before he even knows them. As a plant from the SIS in SpecForce to investigate Garza’s command and rumors of SpecForce defections, and given the two departments’ notorious mistrust for one another, the news does… not go well when Tyr pipes up and reveals the truth about his recruitment to the squad and the general after trading information about Havoc’s reason for being on Nar Shadaa freely with their contact there, SIS Agent Jonas Balkar.

But what follows over the next several years of their continued service together in Havoc is admittedly a roller coaster. There’s some highs in their victories, and there’s some definite lows and fuck-ups on Tyr’s part as a young and relatively inexperienced commanding officer - one of them is, indeed, being a once-SIS plant. But ultimately, Tyr’s left to his place in Havoc by the SIS because the squad’s already in a bad way and by General Garza because Tyr, while he says he won’t fight the general if she wants to strip his rank and position in Havoc and SpecForce entirely, does make a fair argument that she’ll only make more problems for herself, and kicking him out will only draw attention and detract from the hunt for Tavus.

Again, not all of this pleases his squadmates. But they don’t ever entirely give up on him in… a way the SIS seems to. He’s cut loose, essentially, traded over to actually fully live in his position with Havoc. And that stings a little, honestly.

Tyr manages to piss off Hyroh several times. Tyr fucks up, really. They have different opinions because of their exposures to the galaxy, to the Republic’s underbelly and its flaws. Tyr’s a bright-eyed idealist and, early on, pretty damn loyal to it to actual fault. Hyroh actually breaks his nose over it when Tyr puts a blaster bolt through Tavus. And, with time, Tyr eventually recognizes he… deserved that, more than likely. [In time, Tyr will express this as a badge of honor, much to Hyroh's embarrassment.]

Aric and him go… a bit back and forth. Jorgan’s a more experienced soldier, a more experienced leader, and in a way scruffs his new Lieutenant carefully by his little scarves and tries to teach him the ropes as best he can because they might as well try not to get each other killed. Tyr’s an alright kid, he’s just. Inexperienced. An idealist. Aric doesn’t like the truth that he’s an SIS spy, but they smooth things out, eventually. They come back around. Havoc’s really the only place left that Tyr has to hold to at that point. The SIS has left him, Garza’s been successfully pissed off that the SIS went around her. He’s really got no choice but to try to work through it with the rest of them. And, despite the initial blow up, Tyr tries. He does. Genuinely. He learns. And Jorgan can’t hold that against him. And he makes Hyroh happy. That’s… still his younger brother, even if their relationship is… only sort of on the mend, at that point.

And Elara is perhaps the most steadfast of his supporters. Her line of, “I’ve always preferred hard truths to easy lies,” really shows up for him. It’s unsettling, sure, but she recognizes it must have taken a lot for Tyr to come forward with his SIS ties willingly, without official orders from his superiors to do so. While she’s less actively a teacher to him, he does learn a lot from her. And, admittedly, he had his reservations at first, her being a former Imperial. But she doesn’t ever let him down. So, the three of them in particular. The rest of the squad, he’s more distant with but, by the end of things, Tyr learns a lot about how you count on the people actively beside you. He learns kinda what drove Tavus to act as he did, even if its several years too late and after he’s gotten a lot of blood on his hands about it. Havoc's not afraid to challenge him when he’s in the wrong. But they haven’t abandoned him, either. He’s made a lot of fucking mistakes along the way. He has. Maybe he doesn’t really deserve their faith in him, but… to Havoc Squad. Whatever this galaxy throws their way, he intends to do his damned best to see them through it together.

This is all sealed particularly by their experiences together on Oricon as part of the wildly under-prepared rescue operation for the forces the Republic had already lost on the planet and then getting roped into fighting the Revanites alongside Theron Shan and Lana Beniko. Tyr's realization of the... kind of systematic flaws in their operations for the Republic, and the Republic's handling of such operations overall is... a kind of gradual and building experience - something Hyroh and Aric, especially, are familiar with well before Tyr has entirely grappled with that particular serpent. So it's... all the more of a statement to him that they never cast him out.