A/N: Sorry for being so slow with our updates at the moment. Sometimes, real life is just too much. We hope you still enjoy our stories and stick with us, and as always, we love hearing from you!
The conversation over lunch worked well to keep Flynt's mind off Lakhri's mission and the danger it posed. Despite Flynt's efforts at coercion, Eeth did not agree to take them to the course where they might fly a real speeder, yet he did agree to take them to the simulators the following day. Thus, when lunch was eaten and the dishes were done, Eeth sat at the terminal to book them all places.
Flynt stretched his lanky frame. He often suffered from pains in his bones and joints thanks to the rate at which he was growing. It was what it was, and the healers were not concerned although they did suspect that his lineage might not be entirely human. He spread himself out on the couch and flicked on the holo. He had one eye on the time, though, and was counting the seconds until three o'clock when Lakhri was going to call.
"How the Force can you watch holo like that?" Flynt asked Raven when a flailing foot entered his peripheral vision.
Raven looked up at him from where she lay, one leg up the wall, the other over her head and a datapad on the floor. "It's comfortable. You should give it a try." She doubted that the holo was going to stay on when Eeth was finished at the terminal, and so she had some homework ready to go.
Flynt's eyes were watering just watching her contort, but he let her be and focused on the holo instead. There had to be something on here worth watching.
"Raven, as far as I recall, you have an essay to write for your advanced Huttese class," said Eeth, rising from his seat at the terminal. "Please get started on it if you want to have any time left for a workout later. Flynt, please join me in my room."
Given that Flynt was not typically a person who dwelled on things, he hadn't given the second run-in with his grandmaster much thought since yesterday. He was making up for that now. The boy got to his feet, frowned but followed Eeth all the same. He stopped by Eeth's wardrobe, crossed his arms and leaned into the frame.
"Don't you think this is all a bit over the top? You already beat my ass."
"Yes, I did," Eeth agreed. "That was for lying. Now you are going to be punished for disobedience and endangering your safety. If you disobey me again, I will just make it a more impressive punishment. It is entirely your choice."
Some choice, Flynt thought, but unlike last time, he dispensed with any efforts to come across as nonchalant or too cavalier. "Lakhri would never punish me multiple times; you should allow me to confess to my master and leave the rest of this up to him." Despite Eeth's supreme lack of respect for previous suggestions of this sort, Flynt was finding it hard to bend his will to Eeth's when it came to accepting physical punishment. He had, and he would again, yet unlike with his own master, it took a certain amount of jousting before he was able to submit to Eeth.
"Lakhri," Eeth said in a dangerously low voice, "entrusted you to my care. And the argument ends here."
He pulled out his desk chair and sat down. "Come here," he said, the tone of his voice brooking no objection.
Flynt forbore to whine, 'but if I go over there it's gonna hurt!' if only because he was trying hard to have courage. That was easier said than done. Flynt moved to stand before Eeth, his arms folded, trying hard to hide his fear. By now he knew what was expected of him, yet he simply couldn't bring himself to do more than this without being ordered to.
Eeth's face darkened. "You know what to do," he said sternly. "No further stalling. Bare your bottom and get over my lap."
"Fine," Flynt replied curtly and unbuckled his belt, tossing it onto Eeth's bed. Flynt didn't wear underwear that often, so when he yanked his trousers to his knees, he was suitably bare. After a glance around confirmed that the man had nothing from his cupboard within reach, Flynt awkwardly folded his lanky frame over Eeth's lap. This was decidedly uncomfortable for the tall apprentice, yet like most who found themselves in this position, he figured that his comfort was not exactly ranking highly for his grandmaster right now.
Eeth was indeed supremely unconcerned with Flynt's comfort. Moreover, being fairly tall himself, he had no trouble keeping his grandpadawan in position.
"This," he said while shifting Flynt forward so that his bottom was considerably more exposed than before, "is for your disobedience and recklessness. You knew very well you had no permission to fly your glider, and that was for a reason. I do not want a repeat occurrence, ever."
Flynt listened to the lecture, yet he did not appreciate being shifted around. He braced his hands on the carpet and pushed himself back, the effect being that his undercurve was not quite as vulnerable. As far as Flynt was concerned, his ass was displayed plenty well enough as it was!
This, however, was an assessment that Eeth did not share. He pulled the paddle out of his belt and brought it down across the backs of Flynt's thighs, eliciting a surprised and pained yell from the boy.
"I was only going to use my hand," he snapped. "Shall I continue with the paddle or would you prefer me to get the strap?"
Given that Flynt was not stupid, he was quick to respond. "No, grandmaster!" he answered both questions. That last swat was still scorching his pain receptors into oblivion; there was no way he wanted anything worse.
Without further ado, Eeth shifted Flynt into the position he wanted him in, this time encountering no resistance. He raised the paddle and brought it down sharply onto Flynt's bottom which, by now, bore no more than a few fading pink lines as a result of yesterday's punishment. Eeth did not give Flynt much time to contemplate the swat; he let a second and third one follow in rapid order.
"Owwww!" Flynt grunted. For the Force's sake, Eeth was about breaking his ass here! Or so he thought. Luckily for Flynt, he could do little more than grit his teeth, grunt, yell and dig his fingers further into the carpet as the next few landed. This was fast overtaxing him, though, and at what felt like it must have been about the twelfth swat of that infernal paddle, Flynt threw his hand back. "I- I'm sorry! Stop, please stop!" Eeth was clearly orchestrating this experience, and the only way it was going to stop would be to convince him he'd had enough. He had! It fucking hurt!
Ordinarily, Eeth would just have grabbed the boy's hand with his left, pinned it to the small of his back and continued his assault. He thought, however, that Flynt urgently needed to learn to submit to a well-deserved punishment, and it was with that thought in mind that he barked, "Keep your hands in front of you. You have earned every swat I am giving you, and I expect you to accept this correction. You will not try to talk your way out of it and you will not try to interfere. Is that clear, or do you need clarification?"
"No, GRANDMASTER! It's clear!" Flynt replied, reluctantly removing his hand and putting it back on the carpet. "Please, I- I'm SORRY! Don't, Owwch! Ah, Don't... No!" the boy wailed as the paddled roasted his ass a few more times; he simply couldn't take it. "NO!"
"You will not tell me no," Eeth snapped, planting two hard swats to the backs of Flynt's thighs. "I do not expect you to like this, but you will accept it. I am not doing this for the fun of it, I am doing it to help you make better choices in the future."
He planted another set of swats on the backs of Flynt's thighs for emphasis, then resumed the paddling of his grandpadawan's bottom.
"Ahh! I know, I know!" Flynt wailed, but his words were just that. It hurt and he was having a hard time dealing with it.
Eeth stopped talking now; he merely focussed on delivering a very sound paddling to a padawan who needed to learn to set his priorities straight.
At this, and much to his embarrassment, Flynt dissolved into deep, painfilled sobbing. This was hurting him a lot, and there was nothing he could do to stop it! Several more swats fell before Flynt fell limp, his sobs and tearful protesting now entirely unintelligible.
When Flynt reached that point, Eeth gave him three more swats and stopped the paddling. He could see that Flynt had had enough, and besides, the boy still had lines to write. He put the paddle onto the desk and waited for Flynt to regain his composure.
Unfortunately, and despite efforts to the contrary, Flynt had lost his shit, and it was taking him considerable effort to pull himself together. It stung, burned and ached all at once if such a thing were even possible. He slid forwards off Eeth's lap, awkwardly scrambling to his feet as both hands went back to soothe his ass. It achieved little, although he was surprised to find there was still skin left! Again, he felt his anger rising. Flynt was dang near impossible to anger yet here Eeth had managed it twice in as many days. He was angry at his grandmaster for paddling him so hard, for deliberately causing him that much pain, and he needed some distance. He backed up, almost falling over his trousers as he tried to pull them up at the same time. This was not at all dignified, yet he was hardly going to leave the room dragging his trousers from an ankle.
Eeth recognised the boy's need for distance and decided to indulge it. He handed him a handkerchief, rose and said: "You may have ten minutes to yourself. I will leave you here and be back when the time is over."
He patted Flynt's shoulder briefly and turned to leave. Then he paused. "If you need help in controlling your anger," he said softly, "let me know."
Flynt did not respond verbally. Instead, he folded his arms about his chest and looked at the floor. Contrary to the way this looked, he wasn't being disrespectful; it was just that his breath had not yet calmed to the point where anything comprehensible would come out. Flynt waited until the door slid shut, and then he lay face down on Eeth's bed where he proceeded to cry into the handkerchief Eeth had given him.
Meanwhile Raven heard Eeth making tea in the kitchen and poked her head up from over the couch where she was now lying, one leg flung over the backrest. She hadn't heard any screaming going on in there, and for a moment she wondered if Flynt had some magic technique at enduring Eeth's punishments with such a degree of stoicism. Force knew Raven had tried, yet rarely did she succeed, especially so if it were for something like a breach in safety rules. She was unsure if Eeth had even punished Flynt. Heck, maybe Flynt had managed to talk Eeth out of it? That would be a first. "I hope you didn't eat him, Lakhri will be pissed at you. Just saying," Raven said, breaking the silence in the room.
Eeth raised his eyebrows as he emerged from the kitchen, a pot of tea in hand. "Contrary to my reputation, I do not eat children," he replied drily. "Would you like some tea?"
"Oh, you totally do, especially children who fling themselves off of balconies and lie about it." Raven shook her head in response to his offer of tea because even after two years, she hadn't really acquired a taste for it.
"I do not," said Eeth with dignity, pouring himself some tea. "I do mete out correction whenever warranted. However, I am not in the habit of telling others about the details. How is your Huttese essay coming along?"
Raven had expected an answer like that, but she refrained from rolling her eyes as Eeth chose that moment to look over at her.
"Poodoo, La pim nallya so bata," which roughly translated in Basic as "badly". Raven flung her other leg over the couch, jumping just before the momentum caused the thing to topple. "It took me two hours the other day to translate the stupid questions and choose one. I haven't even started on the essay yet. This class is a lot harder than the last one," she felt compelled to defend herself.
"You have not started on the essay yet?" Eeth asked, eyebrows raised. "Padawan, level two Huttese might be harder than you thought, but I still expect you to apply yourself. I will not take you to the gym this afternoon before you have made a decent start on your essay."
Raven's face scrunched. She slumped into the chair opposite him and rested her chin in her palm. "It's just an essay, and I'll finish it. Why are you all over me about this?" she complained.
"Because it is an important class, I do not want you to fail it, and you seem to have difficulties doing what your teacher requires from you," said Eeth sternly. "Do I need to provide motivation or will you get started on your own?"
"No, master, I'll do it. Besides, you've already eaten your one child for today," Raven replied, her lip curling slightly.
Eeth did not dignify this with a response. He took another sip of tea, glanced at his chrono and returned to his room where he found Flynt waving around the lid of his medical kit.
"What are you doing with my medical kit?" he asked sharply.
Flynt stopped waving the lid around the second Eeth's voice caught his attention and abruptly straightened.
"I was looking for an anti-inflammatory," he admitted. Flynt was entirely unwilling to lie about his motives, but he was attempting to sound casual about the whole thing as he replaced the lid he had been using to fan his ass and stood.
"Just for the record," said Eeth. "In this household, I am the one who hands out medication. I strongly advise you against taking any without my explicit approval. Now I believe you have lines to write. Do you remember what to write?"
Flynt frowned and put the medkit back on the shelf. It was hardly surprising that he wasn't allowed access to it, after all. He was more displeased with having to write lines, however, and it showed. "I won't disregard my safety," he recited, his expression as if he had bitten into a lemon.
"I will not disregard my safety again," said Eeth, who had a very good memory for such things. "I will provide healing after you have completed your lines."
He set a datapad and a pen onto his desk.
Flynt thought that was semantics. However, when it came to writing out a certain number of words repeatedly, he figured that perhaps there was some method in Eeth's madness after all. Flynt toughed it out until Eeth left the room and then he knelt on the desk chair and started fanning his ass again, this time sans the lid. Writing that crap out one hundred times was going to take him forever and his ass was burning. Was it possible to actually die from a broken ass, he wondered, and got to work.
Eeth sat at the dining table, pulled up his datapads and started working on a report. There was peace and quiet for an hour or so, after which time he decided to check on Raven.
He knocked on her door, waited for a few moments and then opened it a few inches. "How is your essay coming along?" he asked.
Adopting the persona of Onyx from their Nar Shaddaa mission, Raven tipped her chair back on to two legs and propped a foot on her desk.
"'Grancha, Lorda, Kimbaboloomba patogga lumpa?" Which, roughly translated from gutter Huttese to Basic, meant that her essay was going as well as could be expected, and that she really wanted something to eat. Preferably a vegetarian pie.
"Lunch was barely two hours ago, padawan," Eeth said drily. "How much have you written?"
Raven gave him a wounded look; she wasn't really hungry, but if it got her out of more work... "You can read the introduction if you like," she suggested. Raven knew this would be the equivalent of wading through mental quicksand for Eeth who was fluent in Huttese. Besides, she did not particularly want to torture him.
"Thank you, padawan, I will go over it tonight for you," Eeth replied, giving her a brief smile. "If you like, we can go to the gym now. Pack your things. I will check on Flynt in the meanwhile."
"Yeah! U kulle rah doe kankee kuug." Raven wasn't sure how Eeth would react to being called 'her type of scum', but when he did no more than raise his eyebrows, she gave him a shit-eating grin and dashed for her gym bag.
Eeth entered his bedroom to find Flynt standing with the toe of one boot on his chair, leaning forwards on his elbows. He had changed positions so many times during the past hour that he'd forgotten to be embarrassed over showing how much pain he was in.
"Last one," he announced before Eeth could inquire, and a few seconds later, he tossed the stylus onto the desk. Flynt turned to face Eeth and started pulling up his trousers (he had pulled them down again shortly after Eeth had left) only to grimace and think better of it. "I'm sorry, grandmaster, but you're gonna have to put up with looking at my ass because it hurts too much to pull them up," he said honestly.
"If you have done an adequate job, I am going to help you with that," Eeth replied, offering him a small smile. He took the datapad, glanced over it and nodded.
"Lie on my bed," he told Flynt. "I will heal some of the pain in your bottom. After that, we are going to go to the gym."
"The gym?" Flynt couldn't help the grimace because right now he could not think of anything worse than sweating, Force-aided healing or not! Despite this, he did not complain and lay down as instructed, but before he buried his face, Raven's voice drew his attention to the closed door.
"If you're going to take ages, can I go? I'll meet you both there?" she asked, a tad impatiently. It wasn't that she had no sympathy for Flynt; she did, but she had been sitting at her desk forever and wanted to blow off some steam.
"Padawan, go ahead and warm up if you are this impatient," Eeth called. "I am going to need a few minutes with Flynt. We will follow when we are done."
He turned towards Flynt and said: "I am going to use the Force, as well as some bacta, to heal your bottom. If there is any lingering soreness, let it serve you as a reminder not to be so reckless again; but it will not be much, and it will definitely not prevent you from working out."
Five minutes later, Flynt was beginning to believe that he might actually sit again. He stood, gave his ass a cursory rub just to be sure, but was not disappointed. Sure, he could still feel it, but it wasn't nearly as bad as before. "Thanks," he offered, grateful that he would not be forced to endure the next few days unable to sit down.
Eeth rose and stowed the jar of bacta away.
"Collect your gym bag and come," he said. "Raven is waiting for us."
"Alright," said Flynt and did as told. A moment later, he emerged from Raven's bedroom, bag in hand. He snatched his cloak from the hook without thinking, the resulting ripping sound making him wince.
"One moment," Eeth said, putting a hand on Flynt's shoulder to stop him and examine his cloak. "How did this happen?" he inquired.
It crossed Flynt's mind to brush this off, to say that he'd torn it somewhere, somehow, he couldn't remember. That thought was brief, though, when he considered having to cut another switch if Eeth caught him out. If there was one thing he could take home about his grandmaster, it was that the man missed nothing. "The short version is that Raven ripped it by accident when she tried to drag me home this afternoon. I reiterate that this was an accident. I wasn't in a rush to come home for reasons that ought to be obvious, and Raven didn't want me to compound my issues. No further ass-kicking is required, grandmaster, honest." Flynt didn't think he could take another round of disapproval from Eeth; his ass simply wasn't cut out for this shit.
Eeth paused for a moment, processing this. All things considered, he thought Flynt should be given credit for making what was clearly a truthful confession.
"Thank you for coming out with the truth," he said quite gently, squeezing Flynt's shoulder briefly in approval. "So whose job, do you think, would it be to mend it?"
"I suppose it would be mine," Flynt replied. He shoved his hands in his pockets and toed at the floor with his boot. "I don't know how to sew, though." The moment Flynt admitted to that, he knew that the potential for sewing 101 with Eeth was imminent. Well, it could have been worse, and he was grateful for the fact that Eeth didn't seem annoyed enough to tear him a new one over it.
"I will show you," Eeth replied drily. "If you pay attention, you will manage to do a decent job. Your master will be able to tell you all about it; he was an expert at tearing his clothes and I forced him to become an expert at mending them. It can be a useful skill, at times. Even more importantly, it can be a good reason to be more careful with your things. Now let us not keep Raven waiting any longer."
Flynt wasn't confident that his sewing efforts were going to pass muster, but nor was he willing to argue about it. He followed Eeth to the gym where Raven had apparently grown tired of waiting and was now swinging from a ceiling rail. She sensed Eeth's presence and swung 'monkey style' to the wall, dropping the rest of the way to land on the floor in front of them.
"You guys missed all the fun. You should have seen the team that just left, they were crazy good," she said, although the smile dropped a little when she noticed Flynt was no longer attempting to hide the tear in his cloak. He had told her that Eeth promised to take a switch to him if he tried lying his way out of trouble again, which meant one of two things: Flynt was going to be in yet another world of hurt later on, or they were busted.
Eeth noticed Raven's look and the edges of his mouth quirked upwards ever so slightly. "Do not concern yourself with Flynt's cloak," he said. "He is going to mend it tonight. Now let us get to work."
"Argh. Flynt, if you start running now you might— no, actually, you won't. You're stuck sewing," Raven acquiesced.
Eeth led the two padawan through a strenuous warm-up. Then he sparred against both padawans at once, which did not prevent him from rapping out corrections and advice. He was mindful of Flynt's arm, too, encouraging him to use tactics that would allow him to compensate for having to fight one-handed.
Flynt had done quite a few workouts with Eeth and he had yet to feel overly hindered by his arm. Working with Lakhri was the same, but he was grateful to his grandmaster for making an effort.
When they entered their common room an hour later. Raven made a beeline for the cooler and produced a jug of water and some fruit.
"Want some?" she offered the other two while crunching on a piece of chagga. The workout had been enough to suitably exhaust her, which for Raven was satisfying.
"Thank you," Eeth replied, accepting a piece of chagga. "Flynt, fetch your cloak. I am going to show you how to mend it."
Raven gave Flynt a sympathetic look as he fetched his cloak. Then again, Raven'd had her fair share of sewing thanks to their chemistry class debacle last cycle and was honestly glad it wasn't her.
When Flynt sat opposite Eeth, Raven figured they were going to be at this for a while. She glanced at her watch, contemplating asking permission to go to the lounge, but two things made her doubtful of receiving it: firstly, Eeth had been riding her over this stupid Huttese essay, and secondly, she had chores. Besides, she wanted to stick around and see how Lakhri was doing. "Could I go to the lounge after Lakhri's called?" she asked instead.
"You may go when you have completed your Huttese essay," Eeth replied.
Raven huffed, but she had expected as much.
Before anyone could get started on their tasks, however, the comm unit chimed. "That will be Lakhri," said Eeth. He noticed that the call was coming later than expected. Lakhri looked correspondingly tired when he appeared in front of them. Nevertheless, he smiled as he saw Flynt.
"Padawan," he said warmly. "Eeth, Raven, it's good to see you. How are you doing?" He was mainly looking at Flynt when he asked that, so Eeth just smiled, nodded and left it to Flynt to answer. Following Eeth's lead, Raven offered Lakhri a deferential nod and kept quiet, too.
Flynt bowed, perhaps a bit more formally than he might have ordinarily. He truly missed his master and felt all out of whack without him around.
"Good," he replied, not wanting to add to his master's problems by telling him that he'd gotten into an epic clash of wills with his grandmaster and come off second best. He gave Lakhri a once-over, silently relieved to see for himself that the man was indeed intact, albeit weary.
"Will you have this settled soon? Will you be able to return to the Temple then? And please tell me no one has tried shooting you?"
Lakhri laughed. "No, no one has tried shooting me yet," he replied, "although I keep having to prevent people from strangling each other. I like to think there's some improvement, though. One more week, and this should be resolved one way or another. Really, if this was just about me, I'd return to the Temple this moment. I hate being separated from you. Has everything been going well? Have you behaved for Eeth?"
He winked as he said that; he did not really expect Flynt to get through this whole time without the occasional bit of trouble. Force knew he hadn't been able to at that age!
Flynt caught the wink and relaxed. "Umm, yes, but, no," he said honestly. "I guess I could have behaved better." He thought this was a good enough explanation for the moment, considering that Lakhri had far more serious things to deal with than a padawan who flew a glider without permission and managed to piss off his grandmaster.
"Flynt decided to test his glider on his own, against his teacher's instructions," Eeth remarked drily. "I hope I made clear to him that such acts of recklessness are not acceptable."
"You did?" Lakhri asked, raising his eyebrows at Flynt. "Padawan, I'd appreciate it if I came home to find you in one piece. On top of everything that is going on here, I don't want to have to worry about your safety."
"Hey, don't sweat it. I'm completely safe," Flynt attempted to reassure his master. "You're the one away from the Temple on a mission with diplomats tossing blasters around and trying to strangle each other, so don't waste time worrying about me. I have Buzz Killington here to keep me in line, after all." Flynt gave Eeth a disarming smile, hoping that the man understood that he was trying to assure his master of his safety. Alright, alright, and maybe he was taking the piss out of his grandmaster, too, just a little.
Eeth gave him a pointed look and then turned back to Lakhri. "You need not worry about Flynt," he said. "You know I will not let him come to any harm. And, as I said, I think I made my opinion on reckless stunts quite clear to him. It will not happen again."
"No, I assume it won't," Lakhri conceded, knowing from first-hand experience how Eeth made such things clear. "Flynt, just… just stay safe, okay?"
Flynt nodded, becoming serious for a moment. "I will, you have my word." Truth be told, the only real danger Flynt thought he faced was Lakhri's disappointment and Eeth's wrath. At the moment, however, it was the former he felt most because if Lakhri was worrying about him, he might miss something, get taken hostage or worse.
Lakhri smiled. "Alright, then. I trust you to do better. And I'll be home soon, promise! How was your first piloting lesson?"
Flynt did his best to make out like everything was going well so that Lakhri wouldn't worry about him. They chatted for a few more minutes until Lakhri had to end the call.
"May the Force be with you," he said, smiling at them all. "Especially with you, Flynt. Take care!" The blue image flickered and vanished.
"Right," said Eeth abruptly. "Raven, finish your essay. Flynt, come here. You are going to start sewing now."
"Yes, master, but… Is there some reason you're making me complete the whole essay now? Are you pissed off at me over Flynt's cloak?" Raven hedged. She would do as he asked without complaint, but was a bit confused as to why. Sure, Eeth had made her do similar things often enough in the past and Raven usually put it down to Eeth being, well, Eeth! Today, though, she wasn't so sure.
Eeth gave Raven a scrutinising look. "No, I am not punishing you for tearing Flynt's cloak," he said. "From what I gathered, he did not want to come home and you pulled him along, inadvertently tearing his sleeve. That is hardly a punishable offence. Flynt readily conceded that he should be the one to mend his cloak, so why should I punish you on top of that? Do you feel that there is anything I'm overlooking?"
"No, master, I don't, but neither am I happy about having to finish the essay tonight when it's not due for another week."
"Hey, wanna swap?" Flynt offered, holding his cloak up with a finger through the tear. "I will trade you one hour of sewing 101 for the body of your essay; you do the conclusion so it looks legit?" he added, scratching at imaginary chin stubble as he pretended to contemplate his terms.
Raven considered this for a second. "If you do the outline for the conclusion, you have a deal."
"No, you do not," Eeth said firmly. "Raven, get to work. We both know how long these things take you. Tomorrow, you want me to take you to the simulator, and given that you will have a workout and chores to complete, there will be little enough time left. I do not want you to work through the night to finish something that could easily have been completed earlier."
"Yes, master," she replied. Then, when Eeth turned his back, Raven pointed at Flynt mockingly and faked hysterical laughter before taking up a spot on the couch to work.
Flynt picked up an achagga fruit that, thankfully for Raven's sake, still had its skin on and threw it at her.
"Such a child," Raven complained, catching the fruit deftly. She scrunched up her nose when it squished in her hand, though. Eww.
Satisfied, Flynt took the chair opposite Eeth and unrolled his cloak. "I suck at this sort of thing." He thought it only fair to warn the man.
"I do not want to hear any self-deprecating remarks," said Eeth. "Of course you 'suck at this sort of thing' if you have never done it before. That hardly means you cannot learn how to do it properly. Now, first important lesson. With big tears, it is pointless to just sew the edges together. The seam would either open up again almost instantly, or you would have to make the edges overlap, which would create folds. In other words, the result would either be ineffective or look bad. Therefore, you need to underlay the tear with a length of fabric that is as long as the tear and a few centimetres wide. Luckily, all the tunics and cloaks of the Temple are made from the same few types of fabric, so I always have a spare length here."
He produced a roll of fabric in the colour of Flynt's cloak, put it in front of him and handed him a pair of scissors.
Eeth's explanation was concise and made logical sense, so Flynt accepted the scissors and started cutting.
"You know Lakhri better than me," he said, midway through cutting out his first piece of fabric. "Do you think he sounded disappointed enough to become distracted?" Flynt was doing his damnedest to keep from sounding as if this was more than a mere conversational topic here.
"No," said Eeth. "He might be a little concerned but then, he would hardly have expected you to stay out of trouble all the time. Force knows he got into his fair share of trouble himself when he was your age, including those two or three times I had to leave him behind when I was assigned a mission. In any case, he is an experienced Jedi with a high degree of mental discipline. He is well able to remain focussed on his mission."
"I know." Because Flynt really didn't doubt Lakhri's ability to fulfil his mission. "Don't suppose he ever threw himself off a balcony, though?" It wasn't really a serious question, but Flynt was enjoying the exchange in any case.
"No," said Eeth, "but he had not been a padawan for much longer than you when I had to leave him at the Temple with my master and he decided to make use of that opportunity to engage in an unauthorised sparring match with an older padawan who had already built his own lightsaber. He had a strong urge to prove himself at the time. Unfortunately for him, he was not fast enough to block a blow and sustained a burn to his ear. He also lost some hair in the process. – Good. Now you take that strip of fabric, lay it underneath the tear and pin your cloak to it. Take care not to produce folds."
As Flynt's fingers worked to produce the effect Eeth had explained, he had the mental picture of a much younger Lakhri facing off against Eeth over something like fighting, and as horrifying as being punished for such a thing would have been, Flynt's lip pulled into a slight smile. He placed his piece of fabric across the back of the tear, wondering how he was meant to stick it there. "What was the worst thing he ever did?" Flynt wanted to know. It was more morbid curiosity than anything else. Besides, it was kinda nice to shoot the breeze with his grandmaster when the man wasn't pissed off with him over one thing or another.
"I think you already know about the frog incident," said Eeth, handing Flynt a box of pins. "Here. Use these to pin the strip of fabric to the cloak. Try to do it neatly and without catching the other side of your cloak. When you have done that, you have completed most of the work; the sewing droid will take care of the rest."
"Yeah, he did tell me about that one, and I can kinda see his point; anyone would feel like getting their own back after putting up with that," Flynt admitted, only to groan as, despite Eeth's warning, he had managed to pin the other side of his cloak too. "Didn't you have something that bugged you as a padawan?" he asked, pulling the last two pins out to do over. The main reason Flynt wanted to know this was because he honestly wondered if a Jedi who was as perfect as Eeth seemed to be ever had issues with anything at all as a padawan.
"I did," said Eeth. "As a rule, I did not get along well with others my age. I thought that did not affect me but the truth was that I was trying rather too hard to impress them. That tended to lead to unpleasant situations. – Careful, you are stretching the fabric too much! It will wrinkle."
Loosening his grip on the fabric Flynt threaded the last pin and lay it flat, smoothing it over with his hand. "You fought to show how good you were? Why?"
Eeth hesitated. "I was arrogant," he finally said. "I was also insecure. Unlike most others, I can remember parts of my childhood, and none of what I remember is pretty. The Council had their doubts whether to admit me, given that I was already four years old when a Jedi found me. I had a hard time forgetting that, and consequently I tended to feel that I needed to show everyone what I could do. It was a dangerous path to walk. I was lucky to have my master's guidance. When I disobeyed her during a mission because I thought I could single-handedly save the hostage we were meant to retrieve, against her explicit orders, she put me on probation, took away my lightsaber for at least two months, and I spent most of that time restricted to the Temple and doing duty in the infant creche in about every free hour. She also teamed me up with the best fighter in the Temple who showed me that I was not as invincible as I had thought. I was considerably more humble after that experience."
By this point, Raven's datapad was resting on her chest, and she had one ear tuned to their conversation. Eeth didn't often divulge a lot about his past, or his feelings for that matter; she was curious to see how this panned out.
Flynt raised his eyebrows. He thought that creche duty sounded like fun, but… "Two months is a long time to go without your lightsaber," he said, accepting the small elliptical device Eeth handed him, eyeing it dubiously.
"It is," said Eeth drily. "And I deserved it. Now, this is a sewing droid. You need to insert yarn in the right colour first. It will then do the actual sewing for you. It cannot handle two layers of clothing, though, so you will have to insert something into the sleeve, such as this piece of flimsiplast, to stop the droid from sewing the back of the arm to the front."
He showed Flynt how to insert the yarn and how to insert the flimsiplast into the sleeve below the tear. "Now you can set the program," he said, demonstrating to Flynt how to activate the droid.
In all honesty, Flynt was still a little taken aback by the fact that Eeth had not always been the epitome of Jedi serenity, yet knowing that he had faults made him seem more real to him. "How come Raven was complaining about repairing her cloak if there are sewing droids?" he asked while guiding the droid to take over.
At this Raven poked her head up over the couch. "Because Raven found out that sewing droids are freakin' hopeless at repairing holes!"
"Correct," said Eeth. "They can sew a straight seam but they are not designed for darning holes. She had to do most of the work by hand. – Good. We are nearly done here."
As unexpected as this was, Flynt found that he had actually enjoyed the sewing! It felt fulfilling to mend something by hand, and he wasn't nearly as fidgety as Raven, which had been her number one problem with the task. Well, he wasn't about to admit to that, and so he just ran his fingers over his handiwork and smiled. Lakhri was going to be home soon and his relationship with Eeth was improving; things were looking up.