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Who: Ahsoka + You
Broadcast: Yep!
Action: Not really (though if you want to find her, she'll be in her room on the Starstruck)
When: idk today

Hey! Soooooo since we're all stuck here, and going outside on this planet kinda sucks bigtime right now, I've been making it a project of mine to try and learn as much as I can about the different cultures of the other worlds people here are from! Particularly Earth, because there's so many of you! Someone told me the collective noun is "Earthlings"? Anyway.

I've been trawling through the media library, but to be honest, I'm not very good at sitting and reading for long periods of time. So I figured, why not just ask you guys instead?

Tell me one (or more!) thing about your home world that you think is culturally significant. It can be traditional, religious, social, or pop culture is fair game too! After all, it's no fun when people are making pop culture references that fly over my head.

The only rule is that you can't say the same thing as someone else. You ready? Go!

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What? Why would you-- why would you say that?

Why do all the stories from your world always involve people dying horrible deaths? Doesn't anything happy ever happen there?

[Quick, do Florian and Jonquil have a happy ending--

--okay, probably not, at some point there was a fire involved. What about The Dornishman's--wait, no, that also ends in somebody dying.]

In some of them, aye, but the ones with horrible deaths, as you say, are the ones I remember best. [A breath.] Sansa always did like the ones about knights and their noble ladies better, so mayhaps you might have better luck getting something without someone dying out of her.

[He's trying to be genuinely helpful here. It's--not helping.]

[Ahsoka just chuckles.]

I'll add it to my ever-growing list of things to ask her.

If you want, I might be able to help you take a few things off that list.

[A beat, then:]

Besides songs and stories, anyway.

Edited (thought of something!) 2016-05-22 13:19 (UTC)

[Hmmm. That gives her pause. Most of the things Ahsoka wants to ask Sansa are personal-- can you sing for me? What will you do when you go home? And so on and so forth. But... maybe this could be an opportunity to get to know her better. Sansa herself is so always so wary of ulterior motives, so careful with her words, spending each one like it were a million credits she'd be loath to part with. Maybe asking her brother would be easier.]

... Huh. Really? Okay... hmmm.

What's your family's exact position in all of this-- going on-- back home? I keep hearing about it, but every time I hear a little bit more about it and think I understand, I put my foot in it.

[A sigh. All right. After a moment spent fiddling with his communicator and muttering something about seven hells, he finally manages to put a private encryption on the feed.]

You'll have to understand, by the time much of this happened, I was at the Wall, so I can't say I'm the best person to ask. [A moment's pause, then:] My father--Lord Eddard Stark, who was lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North--was the Hand of the King, the second most powerful man in Westeros next to the King himself. He was asked by King Robert Baratheon to assume the office, after the previous Hand--Jon Arryn--died. But something happened, I don't know what, and the King died--gored by a pig, as best as I could tell from the rumors. He left behind two sons and a daughter by the Queen Cersei Lannister [we're not even going to get into the incest rumors flying about, Jon's already scarred Ahsoka enough for one conversation], and his eldest Joffrey was--

[A moment's pause. How to convey his utter loathing for the guy?]

--very good at being a very bad king. Sansa was at King's Landing, she might know best about that, but what I do know was that one of the first things he did as king was charge my father with treason and execute him in front of a crowd. Sansa, who had been betrothed to him by then, became the Lannisters' hostage. [That's about all he's willing to say on anything regarding Sansa's time under the Lannisters, so he continues on:]

My brother Robb didn't take it very well. The next thing I heard, he'd raised his banners and started a war, then he was declared King in the North. Besides him and Joffrey [and he says that name with enough loathing that it's probably really obvious where his loyalties lie], there were two other kings--Renly and Stannis Baratheon, brothers to the late Robert Baratheon, who questioned the parentage of the Lannister children. [A moment's pause, then:] I've met Stannis. He's--not the sort of man who bends easily, and he's brutally honest as well.

[But Jon sounds like he kind of respects the guy.]

As for my family--I hadn't heard from them in Westeros in some time. The war--it didn't go very well. For anyone.

[Ahsoka listens, taking that in. Jon's good at explaining it simply, at conveying the important information, so Ahsoka has no trouble following along.

When he's finally done, she lets out a long exhale.]

... I heard. [About Robb. About Sansa marrying Tyrion. Ahsoka doesn't specify which. Does it need to be specified?]

... Thank you. I know that can't have been easy for you. But-- I feel like I have a much better understanding of the situation now. ... I'm grateful.

I'm a man of the Night's Watch. [His tone is heavy, weighed down with grief and sorrow and regret.] We take no part in the wars of the realm.

[The way he recites it, though, says a lot about how much it breaks his heart to have had to stand aside. What is duty, after all, when compared to a brother's smile, a sister's laugh?]

You're welcome, Ahsoka.

... Is it ... better? Being here. Rather than there.

[He's quiet for a long moment. There are definitely things he hates about being here--the fact that they're being watched, the secrets he's kept, the last memory he has of Westeros, Theon Greyjoy. But.

Sansa calls him brother. Robb is here, alive. Bran is here, and alive as well. He's not alone.]

I haven't seen my family in years. [A confession, a mark of trust--of Jon letting his guard down, at last.] Most I'll never see again, if I go back. [Can you go back, if you're dead? What would greet him if he did--nothing but a cold, frozen embrace?] Yes. It's--better.

[Yet he still feels as if he's betraying some vital part of himself, just by admitting that.]

... If you had the choice... if you didn't have to live life here as their lab rat, if you could live as just a normal and free person, with the family you have here... would you still go back?

I'm not certain I could go back, even if I wanted to.

... What do you mean?

[I was stabbed to death.]

I'm not going to see my family again if I go back. I doubt I'll be able to see much of anything, in fact. [Which is the closest he's ever come to to telling someone not named Stark that he's dead. He doesn't come out and say it, though--the words stick in his throat, refusing to emerge.

But there's a finality to his tone that says as much already.]

... Oh.

["Poor Jon," is what she really should think, but instead-- what really occurs to her first is "Poor Sansa."]

Sansa knows. [So far, she's the only one. And now Ahsoka.] So no, I suppose I can't go back, even if I wanted to. And I'm not certain I want to.

... I'm sorry.

Do you... have friends here? People you like, and trust?

Some. I've my family, and Tyrion Lannister's not half-bad, for someone with his last name. [He likes the man, even with the things he's done.] And the people on my ship are good people as well. I've a duty to them now. [As the lone engineer, he can't really leave them in the lurch.]

[It comes out impulsively, and she doesn't even know what she's saying until she's said it, but--]

--You should come home with us. All of you.

[Even as she says it, she knows it's stupid. What's she doing, saying a thing like that? Even if it were possible (and they don't know that it is), and even if they wanted to, it's not like Ahsoka's world isn't also in the throes of turmoil and war. Sure, the Starks wouldn't be at the center of it, but it's not like her home is idyllic. And the Starks are from a world so removed from her own, pre-space-flight, pre-anything-flight by the sounds of it-- what would they even do? It's so patently far-fetched, Ahsoka feels stupid the moment it's out of her mouth.]

[For one wild moment, Jon wants to say yes.

Because what else is there for them in Westeros, besides danger and death? Winterfell is burned now, a hollow and ruined husk of what used to be home, and their father has been dead for so, so long. And Jon himself is sick of grief, of loss, of sorrows twisting in his gut like a knife, just wants to rest, just wants his family--what little of it he has left--to be safe. What duty does he have left to the Night's Watch, after all, when he's dead?

But he swallows the word.

Because what does he know of Ahsoka's world(s), besides what she's told him? And it doesn't sound that idyllic either, off that alone, and he's sick of war and turmoil, doesn't want the chance that his family might caught up in another. But gods, for one wild moment he thinks, yes.]

That--That would be nice, I think. But it wouldn't be--

[--home.]

--It wouldn't be the same. [It's a different world, of course not.

Some small part of him wonders about Arya, wonders how she would feel, if the offer had been made to her. It's been so long since he last ruffled her hair.]

Ah... yeah. Of course.

I kind of suspected that would be the case, but-- the offer's always open. If you change your mind.

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short answer: no

ahsoka you sweet summer child

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