#ecsile

kotor starters || accepting

He's always been one for a cause. A sense of direction, of purpose. In the immediate years after the war, Geoffrey had been listless until he found his way to bounty hunting -- not an uncommon fate for his people, in the wake of Malachor. It wasn't much of in the way of an honorable profession, but it was the closest thing he could find to fulfillment.

His people. Sometimes that doesn't feel like it really applies anymore. He'd spent so much of his life under the banner of Mandalore the Ultimate, and now that way of life is gone. Or maybe it persists in some remnant of the galaxy, out of Geoffrey's reach because he'd chosen to walk away. It would take a foolish, arrogant man to think that staying on through the end of the war -- one man, against the death of a planet -- would have changed anything. But that doesn't stop the feelings from surfacing from time to time, those ugly little regrets he suspects he's going to spend the rest of his life picking at like a wound. Just when he thought those old aches were finally starting to scar, she'd come along to knock off those scabs and set him back to bleeding.

"You? Afraid?" He snorts, but doesn't take his attention away from the blaster he's cleaning. "I have a hard time imagining that."

What will be his greatest betrayal, in the end? Turning his back on Mandalore, or throwing in his lot with the woman who'd almost singlehandedly been its downfall? But a cause is a cause, and for as uncomfortable he is in the atmosphere of the Ebon Hawk it still beats Nar Shaddaa by a parsec.

It's not enough to erase his doubts, though, the questions he's been asking of himself since the last time they parted. He'd been too angry to ask them then, too taken aback by what felt like a betrayal. Boiled down and condensed, every uncertainty in his mind circles back to: Why?

Geoffrey's hands still as he glances up at her. He doesn't meet her eyes. "I don't know what you were back then. At..." That graveyard doesn't need a spoken name, not between them. "I don't know if I care." A lie, the question still beating at the inside of his skull. Why? Why? Why? "But I don't think it was afraid."

they don't often talk about the war. carth generalizes, canderous lauds, and bastila approaches it with a distant intellectualism meant to end the conversation as quickly as possible. each offering a truth that lyn can't help but feel is incomplete. like they're being given only the border pieces of a puzzle. tidreen, they've noticed, rarely offers words of her own, but she always listens. follows along with the others in a way that feels like something more than just listening. like a measurement. [ like a judgement. ] but her truth, when she offers it, feels closer to what lyn seems to be looking for.

they seem destined for the underbelly of things — the undercity of taris, the depths of manaan, the shadowlands of kashyyyk, the few dark spaces of tattooine. secrets and uncomfortable truths live in places where they can burrow and remain unseen, and only by canvassing, cutting through the damp and dark can they begin to unravel the knots that wrap themselves around truth. whether it's another star map or tidreen's past. “ i thought i could destroy all my enemies with a single glorious victory! ” @ecsile says, but she does not sound glorious when she says it. they thinks she sounds wretched, like she's nursing a wound, and lyn aches with her.

“ glory is a lie — told to sweeten the taste of blood, to ease it down the throat. ” they say suddenly. the words come out in a strange rhythm as if repeated from another, pulled from a place in the mind they couldn't see. the empty space with the missing pieces. “ and in war it is a lie most will fall for, at some point. ” there's a hardness, a bitterness [ a regret? ] to their tone that surprises them. it feels like a memory but they're unable to place it, grasping for further wisdom but finding only empty air, and they drop their gaze from tidreen. lyn sighs, rubbing their eyes with a sudden tiredness, and is disappointed to find tension they feel doesn't leave their body with the exhale.

a swivel of his pilot's chair in her direction, a haphazard ankle over his knee. jaw slackening slightly as he takes her in. space, he's never going to get tired of seeing her sillhoueted in the door like that, with the nebulous glow of hyperspace painting her in shades of blue. he goes for humor, deflection and it's maybe not what both of them need right now, but it feels the most natural to settle into.

“ you really should have let me space her back on peragus and saved us all a bit of trouble. ” he checks the console with a flick of his gaze. ( 6 hours left until they breach the malachor system , and come to blows with whatever the force has in store for them there. ) “ not that you're never a welcome sight in my cockpit, but we've got time before we clear hyperspace. sure you don't want to try to get a bit of rest? or meditate. force trance with your eyes open. whatever it is you jedi please. you look dead on your feet, tid. ” and the (albeit concerned) jab comes a bit wry and hollow now that there's a cyllindrical weight at his belt with an entombed orange kyber crystal, or that he'd been sandwiched between visas and bao-dur in a meditation session led by tid just that morning. but semantics. playing at atton rand is a hard habbit to break.

"First and foremost, I would like to thank you for giving me the time of day." It was spoken with a bow—one deeper than he would offer most people—as he pushed his sincerity into the Force, his mental shields loose and open in a show of peace and trust. Hers was a face he hadn't seen in years and his own was likely an unwelcome one. They hadn't parted on unfriendly terms, but the last they had seen of each other, Obi-Wan voted to uproot her life and banish her from the only home she had ever known. It was a cruel act, he had justified to himself at the time, but as months passed so too had his capacity for understanding all the hidden places between dark and light, the ones Jedi were often too afraid to look at and shunned as if they weren't another aspect of the Force to be embraced and learned.

"There are some things I wish to speak with you about, if you'll have me." And some things was, perhaps, a bit of an understatement; he hadn't the faintest idea how well she'd kept to date with the war efforts, with the reconstruction of the Jedi Order, or what ceasefire was starting to mean for the galaxy at large. Some things very could have well been the latter half of the war and all the nuance that had followed. There were rules Obi-Wan himself was now breaking, the very ones he had sentenced Tidreen for, and his new project (life goal, truly) would immeasurably benefit from her aide.

      even in with the tension between them, kilspree falling in step feels painfully right, like righteous indignation, like setting a dislocated joint. they shall lead, and she shall follow. lyn turns to her with a twist of their lips pulling at their scarred features. ❝ i wouldn't expect anything less, ❞ they say, smug like she's agreed with them and isn't just playing along for the moment. perhaps, though, she's moved a little farther from minder and a little closer to companion. they allow themself the little indulgence, lips curling further; it is rare they find stable footing when speaking to her.

if her words hadn't caught his attention before, tidreen's open INSUBORDINATION surely has grabbed it now . no slower than a blink of an eye and he's pivoted on his leather heel to face her . . . to cast her in his shadow . a mask may conceal the expression beneath, but even the force bends under the weight of his rage . its reverberations echo through the room.

              a  deep  exhale.  perhaps  they  can  revisit  these  teachings  some  other  time.  ❝  yes,  but——but  surely  VIOLENCE  isn’t  your  first  strategy?  can  we  at  least  TRY  a  little  bit  of  diplomacy  first?  ❞