driftfleet | 02. this is my life now

Entry tags:

02. this is my life now

Who: Gendry
Broadcast: NEVER
Action: On the Iskaulit and the Golden
When: August

The Golden

He'd went to sleep in his nice comfortable bed on the planet, completely oblivious to the notion that the fleet would be leaving that very same night. It was simply one of those things for which he'd had no intention of worrying about it. He woke with a start later because his augment was designed for one thing, which was to tend to the ship's engines. So when the ship began to sound just a bit ragged, he instinctively rolled off the floor the Atroma had unceremoniously dumped him in.

So they were right. He muttered some curses, then pulled himself up to his feet and went to work. After an hour making careful calibrations and monitoring the sensor readings (thank gods he'd learned to read!), he was finally able to return things to what he thought was comfortable. He would afterwards reflect that he really had absolutely no idea what he'd been doing, but the important thing was that the ship hadn't blown up and that this was about the best anyone could hope for. Though as he looked at the contents of what he had to work with, an idea had begun to come to mind.

Some days later, his crew would find him having already removed many of the panels off the stove as he tried to find a way to increase the heat. This was only his preliminary efforts, but he was fully convinced that he could cobble up the components he would need to make a workable forge up here in space. He had the experience, the knowledge, and absolutely none of the permission required to make it a reality.

(tl;dr: find gendry tearing up the kitchen, working on the ship, or paying a little too close of attention to what the exercise equipment is made of.)

The Iskaulit

At some point, someone had the decency to tell Gendry that he wouldn't have to live the rest of his life confined to one tiny ship trying to take things apart in order to stay busy. Instead he was able to live his life confined to several ships, one of which was large enough to be its own sort of marketplace. So one shuttle ride later and he was there!

There was absolutely nothing that interested him. The purpose of the gym eluded him, he didn't want to meditate, he barely could read so books were right out, he wasn't feeling particularly devout, and he hadn't been long enough away from the planet to feel particularly sentimental about seeing plants being grown. So that only left the space bar. With the well practiced ease of a man who spent an awful lot of time on a medieval world, he ordered an ale. What he received wasn't quite as frothy or watery or dirty as what he was used to drinking, but it was certainly a beverage. Eventually a few drinks later and he finds himself sitting on a bench in the public art display, staring at the mural of an artificial sunset.

(tl;dr: gendry can be found at the bar, checking out the art exhibit, or otherwise just wandering the iskaulit taking in the sights for the first time..)

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She'd just wanted tea. That was all, presumably not too difficult to make happen, at least so long as there wasn't anyone taking apart the kitchen when she ventured out of her room to get herself some. Barriss liked her crewmates well enough, but all things considered, she found she wanted more time to herself than usual. She wasn't ignoring anybody, simply keeping to herself - meditating in her room, familiarizing herself further with the science lab, picking off hours for meals, or working through drills and exercises in the cargo bay when no one would be there.

And now she was standing at the entrance to the kitchen, wincing at a clang from Gendry's work.

"Is something broken?"

Gendry held one of the metal racks from the stove in his hand, which he'd had to yank out because of the way it held all those crooked angles to keep it in place. He was just about to consider if it was worth trying to melt when Barriss appeared in the door. Just like that, he was thinking about the trial and the sensation of betrayal and hurt that had imprinted on him. He glared at her accusingly, then turned back to his work.

"No it's fine," he insisted brusquely. "I just need it hotter."

"I see," she replied, hesitance keeping her from moving further into the kitchen for the moment. From the conversation they'd had before, she knew he couldn't have been happy to be relegated to space again, but that displeasure simply accounted for his general demeanor around the ship. This was... personal, Barriss would guess.

"I was just coming to get a drink." A gesture with a tattooed hand to the beverage dispenser, although it wasn't actually somewhere that would have put her in his way. "Do you mind?"

A flash in his expression for a moment seemed to say that he did mind quite a lot and that she best keep her distance. However despite being a man in the midst of taking apart a kitchen, he was able to tap into his better judgement and offer a very curt nod.

"If you like. Help yourself."

Barriss nodded, a gracious, polite gesture, and didn't say anything more as she moved over to fetch herself a mug and get her green tea. She could leave it at that, of course, just go back to her room and let Gendry keep trying to increase the stove's heat output, for whatever he needed it for. But the Golden was only so big and who knew how long they would be here together.

"If we are to be crewmates," she started, moving over to set her mug on the table but remain standing beside it, "And you find you have some problem with myself, or my past or future actions, I would like us to be clear on that."

The mug provided just enough of a barrier between the two of them and Gendry eyed it warily, not just from worry it might be flung into his face but also because it actually smelled rather good. He would have inquired about the flavor if he wasn't currently occupied with both disassembling the kitchen and glaring at her.

"Alright then," Gendry said tersely. "You oughtn't have done what you did to ah, that girl." He paused, searching for the name. "Ah, you know, the one with the horns and the little dangly bits." Then, upon further reflection he hastily added: "Not those kind of dangly bits, though. The sort that comes from her head."

"Ahsoka. They're called lekku."

This was going to be another conversation she very explicitly did not want to have, but if she had to, she was going to be as civil about it as he would be. And never tell Ahsoka about how he had chosen to describe her.

"I haven't done it yet," she continued. "I don't know if she told you that or not. And I don't know what forces my hand to make me chose that action, attacking the Temple like I will, but I do know that something must have gone terribly wrong for Ahsoka to be blamed."

It was difficult to accuse her of things she'd not yet done, but also hadn't even done to him specifically. It was a entirely new pantheon of emotions and thoughts he had to wade through, which Gendry didn't even like doing when it was his own emotions and thoughts. He never asked to have to deal with Ahsoka's as well.

So his grimace lingered just long enough to fade into a frown. "What was so bad about this whole... republic business anyway? Why would it force you to kill?"

There were so many answers she could give to that that Barriss needed a moment to figure out where to start. The corruption within the Republic and within the Jedi was such an ugly, multiheaded thing that she could have ranted for hours and not really gotten anywhere near explaining her position.

"The Republic was good in theory, but it's been falling apart my whole life," Barriss finally settled on, shifting to clasp her hands in front of her. "The Jedi, the order that raised Ahsoka and me, were established before the Republic even was and have been serving as peacekeepers in the interest of this massive democratic state all this time. Or they were supposed to be. We've been soldiers, not peacekeepers, for years now and it goes against everything we should have believed in. I've been... frustrated, at killing people for the Republic, at leading men into battles I knew I could bring them all back from. But Jedi are meant to be above emotions like frustration and I've had no outlet, no person within the Order to talk to about the corrupt monsters we've become."

He had never belonged to any kind of order like that and so it was not easy to relate to all that. But he could think of the Brotherhood and he recalled its nobler ambitions and of how he had joined hoping to be an instrument of justice, rather than revenge. Now he led people to their deaths, justifying it all by acting as a guardian of children just as orphaned as he was.

"It hurt her, you know." It was almost easier for him to relate to what Barriss would do, if only because it seemed like something he himself would do. Ahsoka was too heroic, too good for Gendry to really be able to relate to. But he'd felt what she had. "It was like it gutted her inside."

"I know."

Voice a little strangled, she paused to clear her throat, looking to the deck as she lost some of her composure. The deaths in the Temple were just more blood on her hands that she would never be able to wash off, but the hurt she'd caused people who believed her to be a good person was much harder to consider.

"Ahsoka is-- I mean to say that she was... close to me. We've been through a lot together. I don't know why I hurt her."

"You believed in something."

It was the only answer he could supply, even as he had long become disillusioned with believing in anything. But when he had, then perhaps he would have done the same. Hadn't that been the reason he'd been willing to part ways with Arya?

"Mayhaps too much."

"I suppose that does sound right, yes," Barriss agreed, still not looking back to Gendry. She wasn't sure why this wasn't an easier conversation to have, but it caught her off guard. Maybe she'd never really been the collected Jedi she thought she was.

"I'm a healer, you know. Or I was. I think the Atroma have been nice with giving me the science augment, since it's a lot of things I already know, or close enough. The only blood I ever wanted on my hands was that of someone I could save." Finally looking to her crewmate again, she spread her hands out to her sides. "And instead I'm this."

He had, by this point, worked through all the residual feelings of mistrust and betrayal that had been imprinted on him. Suspicion still rang deep, but that was all him, because he naturally suspected everyone of being in some way being motivated by some ill intent. Except now that her actual ulterior motive was laid out and exposed, it didn't seem nearly so bad as his own imagination might have painted it.

"You do something bad." It was only a statement, one free of any judgement. "Least you had reasons for it. Some, they don't need reasons. What matters is you don't break."

That had her huffing out a breath of air that might have been something like a laugh, if it wasn't so pained. She appreciated Gendry's straightforwardness, giving her at least a moment to force herself to really think about this, without being face to face with another Force user. It wouldn't last, she wouldn't hold him to helping her in any way, but... for a few seconds, it could be cathartic.

"But I feel as though I already have," Barriss said, shaking her head. "I have my reasons, my beliefs, but I don't have a solution, just... more chaos."

All of it was something he was still chewing on, weighing what he thought he felt about it against when he felt he thought about it. But any desire about trying to be cross with her about the whole thing had withered up shortly after letting it all out. She was lost, as much as he was before being pulled away from Westeros. Only he'd never managed to find himself, despite everything else he'd learned. All this thinking was reflected in his wrinkled brow, his his wide grimace, and the uncomfortable way with which he fidgeted with the screwdriver still in his hand.

"I'm no healer. Wouldn't know where to start if I was. But I know how to fix things. Armor, swords, even this stove here. But you can't fix people." He tapped the side of his head with the flat end of the tool. "At least, not when they're broken up here. You don't look to be there. Not yet."

"Not ever, I would hope," she said quietly. It sounded like wishful thinking now. Some part of her had been aware of just how much the war was weighing on her, how she'd be concerned to see it in anyone else, in a clone or a friend or someone who could be her patient. Now that she knew what she would do in the future and had time in her head to think about it here, Barriss wasn't sure where healing or redemption might be.

"But we'll see about that, I guess. I've never heard of anyone being like this and not just... being a villain on the other side."

"What's so wrong with the other side?"

Gendry couldn't fully confess to have come to forgive the other side in Westeros, but he had been plunged into another war for which he never had any stake. Having seen two sides thrown into that war had made him question what the sides even meant. His so-called enemies among the Unseelie had never seemed all that villainous.

"Of the Republic? More politicians who don't care about the lives the impact? The other of the Jedi are the Sith, corrupt powermongers who feed on darkness and despair and their own self gain above all other motivations. No one wakes up one day and decides they want to be a villain, do they?"

It was best left a rhetorical question, but Barriss was sounding upset now, like there was something stuck in her throat she couldn't quite dislodge. She knew too much about the fate of the Jedi - about the Sith that would destroy them and then bring balance to the galaxy, at whatever cost - to know if she even wanted to be one any longer. If she even deserved to be one, for the thoughts she had and the actions she would take. She found herself worrying that she would agree with the Sith, even as she had to acknowledge the fact that Sith were where Jedi so often went when they fell.

If there was one thing he understood, it was those in power with little concern for those that got stepped on in the way. From as best he could understand, all the wars had broken out because one man died, followed by another. Two men dead and the resulting war killing thousands more. One of them was his own father and he would only too readily admit it wasn't worth it.

"Might be they do, when they realize being a hero gets them nowhere at all."

"I think that's the most convincing argument for the Sith I've heard yet," Barriss replied without thinking, a light (the sort of light that means that someone has given up and levity is their only option) tone before she could realize just what she was saying. Joining the Sith wasn't meant to be something she considered.

"Not that I intend to, of course." Even if Gendry himself didn't understand the full implications of her considering aligning herself with the Dark Side, she owed it to Ahsoka not to think like that. "It's just frustrating, trying to be a hero when heroes never get a chance to win for more than a day at a time."

He didn't really need the full implication. She had called the Sith corrupt powermongers, which was as close as 'basically nobility' as he needed to hear to decide to decide he didn't care for them at all. They might as well have been called Freys.

"Heroes die. Might be they live longer in stories, but the real ones don't. They die or become something worse. Being neither is better, in the end."

"I do have to wonder if it's as easy as that, though." Being neither. It sounded like sitting out, like just watching, and Barriss wasn't sure that she could do that, either. Jedi teachings may have been all about putting thought before action and contemplative meditation, but she'd always been so much more comfortable knowing that her actions and reactions were the best ones for the situations. When that was possible, at least. Maybe it just wasn't any longer.

"If you're neither a hero or a villain, what even are you?"

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02. this is my life now

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