#rishla ilesar.

He knew Rishla would find him at some point, whether he found her first or she got to him. He hoped for the former simply due to the tusked-animal laying on top his stomach on the floor, asleep for some hours now, and illegal for him to move when she was. He came to feed her when Rishla's team never returned, but he never left afterwards, and we'll blame the cat that weighs more than both of them combined. There's enough time now that she's already been debriefed, she knows, but not of him.

He knew who he must speak to first, before joining with the Younglings and Padawans, one of them, even with his rank. From the desk, he can hear the Crystal calling to him, asking him what he will do, a pull of the Force, feel like fading feeling of burning regeneration, refusing to die. Because of her, he waits. Waits for it. He is not standing still, only waiting. Wait until he knows he's worthy of something in his hands that so many have died for, wait until that look in her eyes, even if there is a tug in his chest.

SEND ☁ FOR A MOODBOARD OF OUR MUSES:

It began long before he entered the Temple, but the ships landed, he has felt it. A weight against his chest, a pressure, like a hand entering through his spine. A sharp taste. The clawing beneath his skin, arriving before the voice does. A pulling against his veins as he sits in the dark, eyes straight forward. Or, that is all another will see. Look into his eyes and you may see him speaking, may see something, someone laughing with all their teeth, dancing around his side. Do you see his mouth curve? In just the way Kai would like? Just in the way they would, with the hilt of their blade against his back? There's no shock upon his face, only grief, only the expression of someone devoured and they gave themselves up for the slaughter, cut of his head for the feast. 

There will be no sleep tonight, but that was a given, no matter where he was spending the night. You may be able to tell that by the way his skin stretches across cheekbones, the kind of sickly that belongs to those more terrified of their bed than an insomniac. Exhaustion better for his health, if you knew the other options, better than the place just before sleep can arrive. He knows (believes) he's alone at least with his thoughts, would be anyway, but is there not a comfort in Kai being there too, he's not alone, even with their teeth against him, even with their nails in his neck. Is there not comfort, in this kind of love?

1. Mathias doesn't know who named him. He doesn't know who found him on the steps of the Jedi Temple (doesn't know why he was left, who did the leaving, or if he had a name before, where he was born), but later, after Order 66, when all he had left were memories and dreams and no name at all that felt like his own. Then, he liked to think Rishla named him, and he became so close many times to convincing himself it was real. Names a sense of belonging he never had, and this is not even close to the first time he turned to an image of Rishla to find it. He feels like he's mooching off of her an identity, leech it off of her because he's never been able to have one himself. But, he wants to, and that's what's important. For all the times she held him on her hip in her lab, in front of the council, repeating her words to them before he knew their meaning, there's safety through her. He has dumped onto the image of Rishla parental feelings he never knew how to express or handle, and it's showing especially now when he has to actually face her, when she's more than a memory he needed to help him survive. 

2. Mathias' fighting style is half-wild, unpredictable, showing a child forced to become half-feral. However, someone Could begin to understand his fighting style if they knew Rishla. Growing up within her lab, around her weapons and watching her use them, he's unconsciously adopted her fighting style as his own in more ways than one. He designed his knives in ways he thought she'd approve, ways he thought she would make them. To see him fight now, you might be reminded of Rishla in her youth, as a knight with her life ahead of her, and all you need on your arm is a sword. He stands in front of armies with one saber, all the confidence of someone that has earned it. See him, and you'll think he learned it from her, even when he's never seen her in a war until now. As a child, he's only seen her fight within the Temples. This opens up all the questions of how alike are they out of proximity or chance? How many within the Rebel Base confused them once for blood, though the two of them don't look alike, are even different species? 

AGE 11: "I haven't told anyone yet, that's what you do with promises right, you can't tell them or they'll become shit? Maybe that's with wishes? Rishla told me that when the Wars are over I can become her Padawan, when all of this is over. So, it's just about waiting now, and a war can't last forever, right? I don't see her as much as I used too anymore, but she remembers everything. So, I'm not worried. She remembers everything.