BISEXUAL'S FOLLY

It's done!! I redrew every aspect of this so many damn times 😌 I like how it came out though <3

I'm still working out what she gets up to once she winds up with the Alliance. Humanitarian missions, helping to rebuild and support a community would be good for her. However she'd balk at combat, even in the name of defence. Her lightsaber is kept locked in a box and out of sight most of the time; the cold heft of it makes dread coil in her gut.

ekta actually wasn't the one to bring cele to coruscant, another master was. in fact, she'd been off world at the time, and came back a few years later to a child that looked ... eerily like her. she was pretty content to think that this surely wasn't the child that she'd given up for adoption.

cele however is LOUD in the force as a child. and ekta recognizes her as much as cele is aware of her presence. like any daughter, she's drawn to her mother, even if she doesn't understand why. the jedi allowed her to keep the medallion she gave to the twins, and her suspicions are confirmed once she sees it. her daughter had made her way back to her.

this was also how ekta found out the ariideks were dead. she'd been keeping tabs on the them because she (selfishly) kept tabs on them at the orphanage and was told a few years prior that zanya had been adopted out. she was devastated for months to find out her other daughter was dead -- and that she hadn't known.

that colors her relationship with cele a great deal. she wants to be protective over her, wants to build that relationship, but every time she even considers it, that genuine fear of responsibility to someone else rears its ugly head and she banishes the thought from her mind. considering zanya was already gone, she felt guilty for failing at being a mother (twice), and buried that guilt in work.

the sacking left major scars on cele as the eldest of the creche children at the time. her being able to misdirect soldiers and sith alike at her age meant that she could get the other children away from the fighting and hide them from the worst of their captors. she was looked up to afterwards by rhys, sylas and yoshiko as their elder psuedo-sister.

however, and what haunts her the most, is losing adamori. one of the youngest at the time, and because she had been trying too hard to calm one of the other children, she'd never noticed that he was gone. had never seen him taken, at least. for decades afterwards, she was convinced he was dead -- and that she let it happen.

(well. thats a strong word. a sith lord lured him away, which wasn't on her but she considers it to be her fault.)

cele is never quite the same afterwards, even if she acts like she is. her acts of heroism put her on the radar of the jedi at the temple, and when they resettled the majority of them to tython, cele was fast tracked into proper combat training. because of this, she molded to the expectations of someone far older than fourteen quite quickly ... and struggled in the aftermath because she refused to ask for help.

she knows the younger kids needed her at the time, and thats how she excuses not taking care of herself or her mental state. what's more true is that she was just afraid to face whatever lurked inside of her. she didn't want to slip backwards into those hours and days of terror. she didn't want to relive it all. so instead she separates her understanding of herself from the child she'd been and pretends to be older and more mature than she is. she doesn't want to let anyone else down.

little bit of parentification going on, since a lot of the creche children were split up to be on different worlds. these four stuck together, and cele became a mentor to them -- someone they could go to when they were scared and the like. it helps ... and is very detrimental because it just acts as a stopgap to keep her from facing her own problems.

cele really just wants to be enough for ekta to eventually take her on as a padawan, but by then ekta hadn't taken one in years. but she was a prolific jedi knight, and cele wanted to measure up to her more than anything. ekta kept pushing her away and this just made her even more determined.

she and ekta just don't see eye to eye a lot. ekta is far more straightforward, while cele will do anything to save someone else or prevent a mission from garnering too many casualties. she's a bleeding heart in a galaxy that wants her dead, and ekta has been trying to curb this behavior for years indirectly.

shes VERY strongwilled by the time she becomes an adult, and this does make her difficult with the masters who want her to remember her place. thing is, she has the ability to back up a lot of her plans. she also is very capable at a very young age -- and struggles to connect with her peers. she presumes this is just the price of being a jedi.

(she knows exactly what's wrong with her. has been to jedi therapy. keeps not looking at the real issues and assumes more training will fix her)

(doubly, she will do ANYTHING to control herself. even if it means encountering blackouts and ignoring her body and mind until it shuts down. control will make her a better jedi. control will make her more perfect. control will fix her. everything. surely.)

sacrificial lamb alert. she was like this even before the class story started, and while it wasn't malicious, the jedi knew she could be leaned on. depended upon. they kept pushing her, she kept meeting the challenges, and they never let up on her because she just never broke.