gemini

(There’s the difference between them. Woman shunning the mission because of the corruption in her veins. She’s smarter than him. Because man went anyway. Decided to chase light with his padawan by his side, grasp it in his fingers and watch it let go, unable to be held in his hands. He won’t be remembered by the universe, doesn’t matter to it now. He’ll do with that what he will. But the Crystal in his hand forces him to reconsider, whether he’s ready to or not.) He stands beside now a woman he once would have ran from. Both take money for their work, but he’s also the one being hunted, by the wanted posters she would have to answer to. Odd, should we say, them becoming like this? (Survived by how well they held a knife. By how well it sunk into the skin and he kept on walking when he met people like her.) 

“Maybe some regular swords too, those are much more fun,” and personal. Who are they to keep the fight so far away? “Unless you have a preference, speak now or forever hold your peace,” cocked brow that falls after it rises. We can’t compare her attachment with her saber with his own. Stolen off a body. A thing no more at his side, the pike held so long in his hand, broken pieces pulled back together over and over again. “What does that matter?” He gives, not thinking too deeply about her words, that they may mean more, not yet. “Still might want two, or something new.” meaning, there, if you listen. “Or a spare, if our friends come back around,” the Inquisitors they both have faced, from the shadows or in the eye. “I’m not talking about fixing what isn’t broken.”

“Fun is not the word.” She wants to ask him what in the galaxies they could accomplish with regular swords, but then she remembers that any small thing is an advantage when you have the element of surprise, when cowardice keeps you feet away from the opponent. Her hands brush softly against the cool hilt of her lightsaber, a pretty thing, warm yellow and double-bladed; Luha had always been more of a defensive fighter, comfortable with keeping her opponent at a distance. It’s almost as if she knew from the very beginning that she’d be a coward, always keeping others at arms length. A defense mechanism gone faulty and having evolved into weakness. Luha has a preference, of course she does, for years she kept herself miles away from the opponent, for years she hid behind the scope of a rifle. As she watches him from the corner of her eye, she wonders what she would have done had he been on the receiving end of a rifle, and as well as she knows how to breathe she knows that she would have let them extinguish him too. 

DATE & TIME: 1/17, 8:00AM   LOCATION: Rebel Ship heading back to Yavin IV TAG: @olluans 

He came prepared, usually did whether he knew he needed to be or not. Somewhere, he’s still a child carrying wrapped candy in one pocket and bandages in the other, steady hands that flickered into trembling creatures between moments of brief calm. Child so worried. Child who screamed in the night and forgot about it at morning. Child that leaned as far away from himself as he could to avoid his own skin. Worry born selfishly, to avoid himself, and born of a simple, genuine concern. 

Today’s preparations (yesterday’s preparations) was breakfast foods and some lunch on the chance someone didn’t eat beforehand, or they were in the planet-wide city for longer than planned (he thought at least a few hours, not a night, left of waking night terrors he wears on his face now). Out of their packaging, he offers them to a familiar face, speaking in a hoarse voice, as if it has faded and he’s just learning to speak again, “There was—I’d call it dinner, but it’s too late for that.”

Introspection does nothing to pacify the mind, it only serves to pinpoint all of her mistakes, all the avenues and wrong turns. Introspection does nothing but weigh heavily on her frame draw her eyes to faraway places where she’s lying on her belly as rocks and scattered debris digs into her skin and tears her clothes. Sometimes when she’s carried off to those memories, Luha doesn’t even sit in her own body; she watches from somewhere else, sitting cross-legged a few feet from her frame, or kneeling right next to herself. She never knows if she’s happy to be shaken from her thoughts, but the knight always pretends to be. 

DATE & TIME: 1/15, 12:00PM   LOCATION: The Creche, Rebel Base TAG: @olluans

It’s lunch time for the Younglings, leaving way for a mess waiting to happen, but it’s met with a look in Noa’s eye that’s faded through time, that must be seen past trauma, past a heart that’s grown physically weak through years of nothing to care for but a sky. To walk past the Creche, you’d hear the few Force sensitive children, too young to train as Padawans, sipping on milk, the click of a worn fan, and Noa humming an old tune, Morellian. Her brother sang it to her, once. The translation into Basic ruins the tune. Look deeply, and you’ll see the purple under her eyes, the calluses growing thicker on her fingers and palms, lightwhip at her side, she’s used it that morning, trained, for tomorrow morning, will again tonight. Look at the shadow of her eyes. She’s not tired, because there are miles to go.

In the contained chaos, you’d think she wouldn’t notice another soul outside of the room, but it’s clear, when it’s there. A Force signature near the walls. Too trained either way to sense another, to let her presence spread.  She calls to Luha outside the doors, soft voice, “Are you staying, or passing through?” If she stays, she’ll speak to her of the mission tomorrow. Tell her she’s proud she’s volunteered to go, even if not Noa’s mission to Eadu. “There might be extras, if you’re interested.”

A ghoul has creeped underneath her skin, slithering under her bones and making a home for itself in her pain and guilt. She sees it when she looks in the mirror, thinks she sees it when she makes eye contact with others, and even imagines the thing staring at her if she stares into the cup of whatever it is she’s drinking for too long. Luha carries it with her, because she fears that pulling away will leave her barren, cold; and she cannot hope to seek warmth from the others. She is not their golden child anymore, she cannot sit amongst them and pretend that she is anything far from flawed. These empty hallways have become her companion, her confidant. Luha can only show the trust parts of herself when she is along amongst them. With the solitude comes the ease, a reprieve from pretending. 

The body is a strange thing, easily fooled into a sense of calm when surrounded by the shape of home. It’s a strange thing how she breathes easy even when her mind is running for light years by the minute. The ease she feels is second nature because this is home, the only one she knew; she wants so badly to stay on guard, but her body betrays her with every sigh that leaves her lips as she leans against the walls of the temple. Luha allows herself to slip into the calm of silence whenever she’s alone, because she is loved here, and this will be her undoing. She is loved and she feels guilty for this. And she is so consumed by her own thoughts that she is startled at the presence of the older woman. Another time, she would have anticipated her, had she been more attentive and used her force sight. Luha bows her head and weighs her options; the young knight wants to stay but she feels as if she needs to go. Or maybe it’s the other way around, she’s not sure. Either way, her words make the decision for her, “staying, I think.” 

DATE & TIME: 1/17, 3:00PM   LOCATION: The Temple, Yavin IV TAG: OPEN

He’s still standing at the doorway, leaned against the archway, half in the room and half ready to walk away. Left hand flipping a Kyber Crystal in the air before catching it again, a nervous habit, and anytime the indigo hits his line of sight, its all he can look at, not the younglings making their first sabers, and him to the side making notes aloud. “That’ll cause that shit to explode that first time you slap anything harder than a cotton ball.” It’s as far as he’ll go to joining them. Eyes half train on the person next to him, acknowledging, without looking, without meeting eyes. “Think maybe we should have taken the blasters they were in instead?” It’s already wide news about how the Crystals had to be pried from them. “You gonna make you a new one?” He nods at the sabers beginning to form.

The kyber crystals they brought back are exactly like new life, a new beginning...all the things that Luha finds she is not. And as she watches the younglings toil around with them she’s enveloped in this calm understanding: she was right in staying away from this mission, feeling as if she could only corrupt something so pure as is this new beginning. She could never join them like she would have years ago. There are many who could not join them because of her. Many who died without even knowing the face of their killer, and without having a chance to defend themselves. Blasters are an interesting thing; the sound of the shot that rings out before life is extinguished is deafening, but the silence that comes after louder even. Blasters, when in the wrong hands, are an interesting thing. Cowardly. “We could make new blasters all the same.”

Luha doesn’t have to think about the question because she knew from the very beginning that it’d feel wrong to. For one she didn’t want a new lightsaber, the attachment to the one she held near her hip was too strong, too much of an anchor to that padawan all those years ago. And if she made one what then, would she be able to find calm if she discards that girl and stops trying to reattach herself to the shadow of who she once was? Or is it the opposite, would that guilt that chokes her up when she thinks she’s alone only grow in size, swallowing her whole because she is living while other more deserving Jedi have died? She decides that both of those options are much too frightening to even consider and discards them with a shrug of her shoulders, “why would I? The one I have works just fine.”