( Sirius )

If he told her the stories about a boy fighting for his life in a ring made of dirt and blood, she’d tell him a story about a girl left alone to die in the desert. She’d tell him that people have wanted to make them both into Animal—to make them and accuse them and hurt them. She’d tell him, stories like that don’t scare me. And that would be the worst part: knowing they’ve both lived through the ugliness of it all and come out the other side with understanding. Nimm can’t speak for what Fein feels—there was a time when she could have, but she doesn’t know that time anymore—but she can say, if she looks into a mirror, she doesn’t know what she looks like after all of that.

If he told her he couldn’t tell her any stories, because the only ones he has are twisted and ugly, she’d say: it’s okay. All of mine are, too. 

Nimm’s thoughts, running too quickly, freeze when his hands find hers. She blinks, gaze fixed on the tiny scars lining the backs of his knuckles. Her voice is barely audible, “It’s okay,” It’s okay, there’s nothing else they can do. Repeats herself, louder this time, voice cracking, “It’s—it’s okay, Fein.” As long as they’re both okay. 

“But don’t do it again.” This time, she says it with a slight, hesitant smile curling at her lips, “Or else I’ll kill you myself, idiot.” And jabs him playfully in the side for good measure.

I don’t know who will remember us. The words make Nimm’s heart hurt for reasons she doesn’t quite understand, not fully. She catches her bottom lip between her teeth, eyes stinging without her meaning for them to as she finally looks him in the eye and nods. “I want to remember,” A quiet confession. “But we’ll make new memories, too.” They can—and they will.

There’s a slight pause. She looks back down at his half-bandaged arm and lets out a nervous, breathy laugh, “Now, stay—stay still. Let me finish this.”  

Happy Birthday Jacky!!

Moodboard for Llewyn Alarcon ( @llewynalarcon ) & Fein Komo:

As they crept along hurricane slick walls, down ill-lit hallways through the scent of mildew and rusting gears, they knew the mission was falling into place too easily. Fein could feel it itching along his skin like what Master Kenobi always called a disturbance in the Force; but instead of a padawan timing his attack too early, the disturbance revealed itself as two dogs of the empire and their blood red acolytes.

Noa didn’t wait. She and Jezha spun into action faster than Fein could register the fight had begun, and as the acolytes closed in a circle around them, as he prepared to leap to his Master’s side, Noa turned and told him to run. He stands frozen in the alcove her whisper screaming in his ears. He can’t leave her, he won’t leave her. She looks him in the eye and tells him to run, and superimposed over her form – fluid in battle, deadly in her grace – is another master, blood choking in her throat, along her chin. Noa’s whip flashes in the air as she dodges another attack, and Fein takes a step forward.

One solitary half step towards her (he’s made his choice he won’t leave another Master to die, another mother behind, another mentor to leave him alone and reeling) and then there’s a hand wrapped around his forearm.

“Let go,” he snarls, the Force rising up in his throat like bile, like an oil slick along his skin, but they don’t let go, they grip him tighter, hold him there. Fein looks back, and meets Xavis’ eyes, “Let me go to her.”

DATE & TIME: 1/15, 7PM   LOCATION: Training Rooms, the Temple TAG: @ecroixx & @feinkomo

“We’ll do that again—Fein, switch arms, and this is practice for you as well, remember your back. We’ll speak more on it during break,” Noa instructs, circling the pair as she observes them, voice clear, nothing she says is a suggestion. And she is Fein’s Master, but for now, the focus is on the friend he brought into their training. She welcomed Xavis too. Her leading the mission to Eadu, it goes unspoken that those behind her would not go unprepared. Afraid, perhaps, but if we wait until we are unafraid, then we will wait forever. But they can be ready, she can make sure they’re ready. 

The eye she watches him with is scrutinizing, but not judgmental. If another time, if a mission wasn’t tomorrow, there would be more patience. And after it is over, he can know again that she has all the time in the world to help them, to be ready. For now, the luxury is lost. “Xavis, I will ask you to fight as if you will not get to have Fein beside you tomorrow.” She’s telling him to give them more of a fight. They all know that’s possibly impossible. Take an army to get her away from their backs, their sides. But we train for the worst, it makes everything else seem easier when it happens. 

When Fein learned that Xavis was going to Eadu, he’d practically insisted they spend time training, preparing. Jedha had taught them all that the worst was not a just a possibility, but a probability, and he would not lose the first person he’d come to care about on Yavin to a stray saber or blaster fire.

He watches Noa, instinctually adjusting his stances at her words, flowing into the routine they’d come to find in their training over the last few weeks, but always keeping Xavis in his sights. He would train to cover Xavis’ weakness, watch him to know where he needed to be on Eadu to keep him safe - to make sure they both came home to their menagerie of beings in their room.

“Master,” Fein protests without thinking, “I can fight beside him. Its better for him to start off relying on me, is it not?” Better to have him rely than to stand alone, better to let him find comfort in the reliance than to land on enemy lines terrified and alone.

He knows now is not the time for questioning, but as he stands in their little practice ring, he can’t help but ask for as much detail as he can. He was too afraid to question on Jedha, too intimidated to clarify the things he should have known, and all three of them know where that left them.

Atticus didn’t have many stories then, never enough he thought would satisfy Fein and all his curiosity. He still doesn’t have stories worth telling, if they’re about things, about things he’s seen, what hands do. Back then, he talked about home, and too many sisters. when he could speak. Sleepless nights and bandaged faces and solace in the silence. And just as then, he doesn’t miss the light contact on skin, all the effort, it never goes unseen. The younger man’s smile is met with soft features, calm moving from Atticus like waves. (Calm, but don’t look too deeply at the way he takes his hands into his pockets so quickly after the touch. It’s not about him.)

“Does that mean I was before—something you’re not telling me, Padawan?” He asks, soft voice joking, holding pride at the last word. As if he’s seen the younger man grow up, as if he had the chance. In a way he did, even though he was not much older than he basically returned to the Creche, a deputy with nowhere to go. Atticus’ expressions haven’t changed, the quiet nod to Fein’s words, the tilt of his lead, telling him to lead the way. Their height difference hasn’t changed either.

“You haven’t been here long to speak like that,” he was here from the beginning, for passing moments, when Fulcrum needed a house call, and they knew who would always meet them. “The moon is the view, if you’re not looking for something specific.” There is nothing he knows of stillness, despite all his features, despite all first glances suggest, so a place to mediate is lost to him, but he thinks still, as they walk, still dark, still smelling of dew. He asks a different question, but with meaning to it, unexplained, “What do you need?” Solitude? Light?

Just like Atticus to always ask what was needed, not desired. Fein smiles, a little shy in the face of one of the few founders of the rebellion, and shrugs a little, “I haven’t really been looking too hard, I suppose,” he concedes, “The temple’s always been nice enough.”

He flexes a hand, heart still swelling with pride at the way Atticus murmurs Padawan. It only ever feels real when he and Dorian and Noa murmur the word, when they acknowledge his return to the rank he’d achieved before … it all.

“Nah, not you, Attie,” he circles back to the question before (had he ever been able to address the things that scare him first? Was he ever the brave one in the creche, facing it all head on? No. He was always the one circling the edges, waiting for the moment of safety to throw himself into the fray. It had paid off in the arena, but here – these people knew him. Knew who he’d been.) “Things … happened before I got here,” he shifts uncomfortably on his feet a bit, “I mean obviously, you know. You saw me when they brought me here. I spent a lot of time fighting in those pits. It … they put me up against some terrifying things.”

He laughs, hollow and empty. His words tell Atticus it was his enemies that terrified, but nothing’s ever scared him the way he himself did. It’s not funny, but he doesn’t know how else to make this conversation feel less uncomfortable, he wants air. Wants to breathe, to remind himself he’s not still in a cage waiting to be drug out onto burning sands for the whims of others.

DATE & TIME: 1/19, 12:00PM   TAG: @feinkomo​

COMMUNICATIONS CALL.

[When the commlink comes to life, it’ll showcase Matt in Fein and Xavis’ room, Mathias by Fein’s closet and bed, less shame as there perhaps should be on his face as he gives barely a greeting.] Hey, we need some new shirts. [He’s wearing one of Nimm’s now as a crop top, because all of his need to be washed anyway.]

are movements too slow? he shuffles slowly, as if unsure that he had heard the other right - though he knows well fein has yet to say no, knows that maybe the other is too nice to. sympathy or camaraderie, he’ll take it. 

he unpiles the various animals lounging on him away, sets them back on the bed in the space he’s leaving behind; carries a loth-cat with him and picks up another along the way. company, he thinks. 

“of course.” he smiles gratefully at him, nodding his thanks before slipping past the door and into the dimly-lit hallway. “here, for you - “ he hands fein one of the loth-cats, watches her curl into his arms while he cradles the other in his own. “ - for company. or a thanks for it, sort of. whichever one you prefer most.” 

he pads down the hall, slumps down to be closer to fein’s height; knows already how to match paces to shorter legs. it’s easy, almost. we could almost call it normalcy. 

“if you haven’t got any plans then we don’t have to go anywhere. nowhere is fine too.” he says simply, curve of lips sweet, if not for the fluttering. “we can always save everywhere for another time, no?” 

Fein blinks down at the sleepy little cat in his arms, and scratches just under her chin, “A pretty good thanks,” he grins as she curls into the crook of his arm. He sets off for the hangar bay, hardly needing to check if Xavis is following him. The other man towers above him in a way that’s only ever felt comforting. Xavis’ anxieties lead him to slump, bending and twisting his frame in a way that can hardly be comfortable, but leads people to underestimate his full height.

Sometimes Fein wonders what it would be like to be as tall as Xavis – to have a frame that very nearly brushes the stars with each step.

“Orion told me about a little planet she passed just one galaxy over,” Fein turns the corner and slips through the open blast doors into the comforting noise of the hangar bay, “it’s supposed to be a similar ecosystem to this, so you could bring some friends back if you like.”

He surveys the available ships, marking each that would be needed before they returned, before settling on a aging, stolen Lambda-class T-4a shuttle. It’d be comfortable enough for the two of them and have room for anyone else Xavis wanted to bring back.

Fein starts the departure routines and deposits the lot-cat into the back cargo of the ship. It meows slightly in protest and he pats its ears, “Once we’re in hyperspace, lil bud, then you can climb back on my lap,” he looks over at Xaivs, “Ready?”

“No, I’m done with it.” He looked around the room again. “Didn’t need it to begin with.”

Llewyn finally registered his face. In the heart of a fight there was never a moment of hesitation. It was how someone’s last moments were a blue glow and making direct contact with eyes filled with righteous fury while being pierced through the chest. The years that he had stopped fighting didn’t make a dent in all the years that he had, but already he was making mistakes his younger self would have chastised him for. As someone’s body dropped to his feet Llewyn paused. He had been there before. Not just Jedha, but that entire situation.

Except it hadn’t been on Jedha, but some other planet he couldn’t remember the name of or possibly a different planet from that one. No one else seemed to have had the same revelation that they had all done this before. That they were all playing the same roles though he couldn’t remember what his had been. 

Then Llewyn locked eyes with him.

Fein was too far away from him to take it all in, but he didn’t need micro expressions or words to know what he thinking. Llewyn had seen that before too.

“Are you,” He said walking towards him. It always a coin toss. Heads he was the burden, the enemy disguised as one of them.  He didn’t support their cause and stayed out of an obligation they didn’t understand nor wanted to. An alcoholic coasting on reputation alone. Tails he was the lost hero who had found his way back to them and would somehow be the man they wanted him to be. The person they remembered him to be. The person they had hoped he would be. In a short period he had validated and disappointed both.

“In this business words aren’t good for anything.” An apology had not brought a man on one of those planets he had forgotten the name of back from the dead. A promise didn’t console his family. The face of everyone in sight said the same thing. This was the Jedi’s fault. In Fein’s position Llewyn had remained in the training room from dusk to dawn and dawn to dusk again. He had taken hits and hit back at anyone who came less than a foot of the room until everyone decided that they would rather avoid the space entirely if it meant not having to witness a twenty-two year old who was standing only by sheer force of will demand that someone, anyone, fight him. Then he fought himself. His projections became more than a reflection staring back at him. They were extensions of himself. It wasn’t not enough for people to not see him coming. They had to be scared when he did. Nothing brought people together faster than standing over a body in fear that they had all been complicit in this newly minted knight working himself to his literal death.

On his next mission everyone lived.

In contrast Fein stood before him and halfheartedly attempted to reassure him that he would do better next time. Expected some form of validation Llewyn wasn’t in the mood to give.

“Don’t apologize to me.” There were Jedi before Fein who had heard the same speech that could have told him to not take the words at face value. That when he continues Llewyn would explain that he refused them because mistakes were a part of life and no one should ever have to apologize for the space they take up in the universe. Those Jedi were dead. “Telling me you’re going to do better on the next mission is not going to bring Bail back from this one. You want to do better, show them that. This isn’t my fight.  It doesn’t make a difference to me.”

Fein deserves Llewyn’s disdain, he knows this fact intimately, but faced with it head on, he can’t help but wonder if he’s taking the brunt of a series of bad decisions made before he’d even slipped the last part of his first saber together. Llewyn is still as he throws the mission at Fein’s feet, throws the rebellion on the shoulders of everyone around him, and that somehow makes it worse. That he can just shrug the responsibility of his own presence on the mission aside without any indication that the burden of it weighs him down is …

In a word? Disappointing.

“Words are all I have right now,” Fein steps into the room, stars winking above them through the broken remnants of what was once a ceiling, “I thought they’d fill the space until my actions could speak for them.”

He wonders if he should say the rest, then figures if not now, when? If Llewyn is going to throw Bail at his feet, then he owes Fein a chance to repent for that act, “How is it not your fight?” he asks, treading the line between accusatory and a padawan questioning a master, “You’re here, with the rest of us. You volunteered to go to Jedha. You fought on Jedha.”

(I saw you, he doesn’t say the words, lets them echo in his syllables, in his eyes as he watches the shell of the hero he once knew, grace in death and beauty in violence, I saw you fighting and I know you felt the same things I did – you and I were born for the battlefield.)

Fein has been a spectacle for years, and while Matt doesn’t know it, if you look in his eyes, you might think he’s reflecting it. Even as he’s used to being all shadow, all phantom, he enjoys a good show, enjoys seeing faces whiten when the look upon him. Can’t you see him even now, body a flickering thing, a ghostly thing, until he has no Force Signature at all, ask him if he’s alive if he can disappear like that. Making himself known to frantic Stromtroopers the last moment before he shows them how a lightsaber can burn flesh. The Creche’s teachings almost lost to him, drowned out by voices that were more powerful for too long. Still for them, he knew to take the full force of any blaster.

“Oh, my poor brother, I didn’t need to be on a holoscreen for that,” Mathias barks out a laugh, we’ll worry about consequences later, we’ll worry about them when Mathias has to face them, when he has to learn there are few he can’t run away from. He won’t be able to run away from this, and the realization of it just begins to sink inside of his chest. But, for now, there’s more to worry about. For now, he’s the same child lost in the galaxy, the same man who lived like this for so long, “What the fuck is this, a funeral? Shit, wrong joke. But next time, we’re still bringing a speaker.”

He feels it, that oil slick against his skin, crawling up his legs to his chest, incomprehensible, indescribable, and only shown to have affected Mathias in the way his form flickers back into focus, before almost out again, like blinking. Make him think of death, or the lack of. Numbness. But so used to this too, it doesn’t stop the fight, it doesn’t make him think it’s Fein, at all. 

“And still so much to learn,” as he says it, he can feel the eyes on them, from the cameramen, from the other Jedi, those with more expectations than he’ll ever be able to meet, more than he was ever given so he doesn’t know what to do with it. With movements like Matt’s, you’d think he wasn’t thinking at all, thinking his movements weren’t planned, but they are, in their chaos, in the way he pushes Fein into the crowd as the hum of sabers hits his ears. “Think you get to be a hero?” The crowd will be aimed at now, not just them. 

Mathias is flickering – his body literally willing itself in and out of existence, corporeal and phantom all at once, one and the same. It takes Fein a moment to connect the phenomena with his own powers, takes him longer than it should to recognize the roll tide of his own doing. He let himself get caught up in the power of the violence, in the call of blood. His breath comes heavy in his chest, heart pounding along his collar bones. He lets Matt’s body move him to the crowd, lets himself fold into the place he belongs – an echo of his brother’s grace – and with an effort he reigns his Force ability back.

Like pulling ocean waves out of their consistent and immoveable patterns he pulls the nightmares back – Mirialan hands scrabbling at his throat to will him into silence, layers of dirt burying him into a long cold dead earth. He faces the crowd, shaking from the exertion, just in time to wonder idly out loud, “A speaker? What the fuck are you going to play? That trash you call music?”

Fein’s eyes flick to the crowd in front of them, taking in the chaos they’ve started. With little speck of recognition he sees their people taking action – Fein doesn’t know where Bail and Leia are. He hopes they’re in the hands of the rebels, not the alternative. Littered between frightened civilians and faceless troopers, he can see the flash of a saber, the call of a voice he knows, or the flash of someone moving towards the action.

That’s who they’re supposed to be – moving towards, not away; to protect, not condemn.

Hero, Matthias’ lips shape the word, but Fein’s never known it to be applied to him. He wonders if somewhere on a cold planet, in a temple of rules, if there’s a child who will see his green skin and know that there is always another choice.

“I think I’ll leave that label to the professionals,” he nods to where Rishla and Llewyn carve their way into the depth of the chaos, his eyes locking into the whirlwind of deadly grace Llewyn’s become, “We can be their backup.”

That felt more natural – backup. The shadow’s shadow. Fein was born to be a second son, the other brother, the back-up. That made sense to him.

Before:

Fein is desperate to prove himself.

The days after Jedha left him haunted, stalked by the memories of the riot, of the picture of his own face illuminated on the Empire’s screens with the glow of a lightsaber he barely remembers how to use. The burn on his arm is barely healed, a pinched and throbbing reminder that he failed because he did not prepare. 

When his Master steps forward as leader, there is no other option but to step forward to follow. They’ve spent the last few weeks sparring, learning, preparing - now is the time to show her he’s been learning. Now is the time to prove that he is an asset to the Rebellion, not a liability. 

During:

This mission is a test of Fein’s restraint. When battle rages and the Inquisitors encircle their leaders like the predators they were raised to be, Fein lets himself be pulled away. For a moment, he ignites his saber. For a moment, he takes a step to stand beside his master. For a moment, he fighting in wars long dead alongside another Master, in another life; and then Noa tells him to ‘Go. Remember and go,’ and for the second time in his life he abandons his Master. 

He runs, with Xavis & ___, towards the call of the crystals - acolytes at their heels. Around corners, the hurricanes raging against the walls around them, and through it all the crystals call - a pulsing primal energy that beckons. They will not leave without the purpose of the mission accomplished. 

After:

Crystals in hand, one at his heart, Fein can’t help but feel triumph. There’s a grin between Master and Padawan as he races past her into the ship, and suddenly the Rebellion is full of possibilities. As the base begins to hum with the creation of a new generation of lightsabers, Fein turns to a giant of his past for help - he needs a weapon he feels comfortable wielding. A weapon that is less of a remnant of the Jedi he wanted to be, and more a symbol of the man he has become. 

This is loosely what Fein is up to during the mission Crystallize. There are open spaces in this for others to join in, and I am very much down for pre, post, or during threads! 

Note: If we are still involved in any Revenant threads that you would like to drop or wrap up, please let me know! I do not mind in the slightest!