The Color of the Force
Triclops meets Kendalina! At last! And yes, I completely took this from Hokuto meeting Kakyou in X. And I don't care, bwa-ha-ha-ha!
It's not childish to cry. Don't you think that for one minute, Ken. I mean, if we weren't meant to cry, why would we be able to?
Okay, yes, tears do serve a function when you've got something in your eye... I was just remembering what your mother told me. When we first met, I had the same idea, but she told me it wasn't true.
How did I meet your mother? Well, it was quite interesting...
Do you remember how I told you that I DO remember my dreams? When I met your mother, she said I was a dream gazer. They can see into other people's dreams, dream the future, or control what happens in their dreams. It's simple really: I'm just conscious when I dream, as opposed to others who aren't conscious when they dream... it's sort of like being awake in your sleep.
Anyway, all of my dreams, the ones where I'm an inventor, I simply PRETENDED I didn't remember so the Empire couldn't take the ideas and manufacture them... well, I didn't KNOW I talked in my sleep... THAT would explain how they made them anyway...
Anyhow, through my ability, when I was about your age, I reached out with my powers and went searching through the sleeping minds of people all across the galaxy. Most people wouldn't respond, so I couldn't see into their dreams too well... but your mother... your mother was completely different from EVERYONE...
When I touched her mind... she KNEW I was there! She could recognize a dream gazer when she felt it... but, instead of letting me into her mind, SHE came into MY dream. I guess she wanted to see me for who I really was instead of something representing me in her dreamscape... it was a bit of a shock, but still...
What happened? Well...
: "Hey, what am I doing here? This isn't what I was dreaming... But then, I guess that means I'm in YOUR dream, ne?" A bright, gray eyed young woman asked, turning to face the young man behind her. He nodded.
"Well, life IS full of surprises. So, what am I doing here? You're a dream gazer, aren't ya? Surprised I know? My older brother's gonna be the head of my Papa's clan in a few years. I'm the heir to Momma's clan, but I can use more spells to the onmyojitsu of both. Guess my brother's just got no talent... So, with the power I've got, I know about stuff like this pretty much on instinct. Hey, are you okay? You haven't said anything! Oh, maybe you can't talk! ARE you a mute? Healing is my specialty; I could fix it for you..." She said, pacing around the young man as he stared at her.
"I can talk." He said, "You just talk too much."
"Oh... well, I guess I do... so, why are you here? And why am I here for that matter?" She continued to talk. The boy looked up at her, remorsefully.
"I... I wanted to see someone." And as the girl's eyebrows raised, he continued, "I'm... I'm just lonely... I wanted to see someone..." The girl smiled and bent down to see eye to eye with him.
"When you say you wanted to see someone, does that mean just ANYONE would have done? I hope not! I'd like to think you picked a cute girl like me on purpose!" She said and then continued, "Well, if we're gonna be friends, why don't you tell me your name? Mine's Kendalina, by the way." The boy blinked at her.
"Triclops." He said. Kendalina smiled.
"Triclops, eh? That's cool! It's original! Wait... that seems to imply somethin' about you... do you REALLY have three eyes?" When Triclops looked at his knees and Kendalina peered to see the eye in the back of his head, she smiled, "So you do! That's really neat! I wish my brother had an eye in the back of his head. Then, maybe he wouldn't be so boring." Triclops looked up at her, surprised and confused.
"You... you don't care?" He asked, "About my third eye?"
Kendalina frowned then said, "I don't MIND. I'll never not care." She replied, smiling at the last part.
"And... what's a brother? And a friend?" Triclops asked, amazed this girl held so much knowledge. Kendalina stuck her lower lip out, thinking.
"A brother is a big, ugly, stupid, jerk that you have to live with and put up with his dumb jokes and ugly friends, and sometimes you have to kick his butt at hologames so he remembers who's REALLY in charge and you have to listen to him playing really bad music that makes the neighbors complain and your Momma and Papa mad, and you have to sort through his dirty socks to find the doll he 'borrowed' from you and never gave back and... yeah... my brother's a dummy, but I love him, just the same...
"And a friend is someone who cares about you and you can talk to and have fun with, and play with and who you care about and who will help you if you need it. Don't YOU have any friends?" Kendalina said, and when Triclops shook his head, she gasped, "But EVERYONE'S gotta have friends..." She protested.
"I don't. Where I am, nobody cares except about themselves." Triclops replied, unable to meet her eyes. Kendalina smiled and made him look at her.
"But, where we are now, we're the only ones here. So, you DO have a friend. I'M your friend!" She said, her hair falling over her shoulders and her forehead pressing against his. Triclops' eyes grew wide.
"Now, since you mentioned where you are, where are you? I don't know of any place where the people are so nasty they don't want to be friends with anyone else." Kendalina asked, tilting her head from one side to the other. Triclops shrugged.
"A prison. That's all I really know. I've never been outside." He replied as a grin slowly grew on Kendalina's face.
"You've never been outside? Well, then, since this is a dream, why don't you tell me someplace you want to go and see, and we'll go there!" She said, standing up as her hair bounced. Triclops looked up at her, hopefully.
"Really? You mean we can go somewhere? Anywhere! Wherever you can take us, let's go there!" Triclops said, getting excited. Kendalina shook her finger in a scolding matter.
"Now, now! Let's not take THAT attitude! Be specific! This IS our fist date, after all!" She chided, though she didn't sound like she really meant to be harsh.
Triclops thought, but he couldn't think of any place specifically, so he said, "Can we just see what it's like outside? Now?" Kendalina thought for a moment then grinned.
"Well, okay..." And the dream switched over to show a dark, grassy field, the wind blowing through the air and ruffling the grass and their hair, dew upon the ground slightly soaking the hem of the white nightgown Kendalina wore and the gray prisoner uniform Triclops was clad in. Above them was a sky speckled with stars, constellations, galaxies far, far, far away from theirs, other distant planets, dark, wispy clouds, and nebulae even farther than those distant galaxies, and, finally, a large, luminous moon, not quite full, but most certainly not half, either.
Triclops breathed out, softly and slowly, as though he was afraid to shatter the dream. Never had he seen so much light among all the darkness, or felt or heard so much movement and life around him as the rest of the world slept. The moon illuminating her features, Kendalina turned to look at him.
"Kirei desu, ne?" She asked, and upon Triclops' confused expression, she explained, "That means, 'It's pretty, huh?'" Triclops blinked again, then nodded.
"It's so... endless..." He murmured. Kendalina grabbed his hand and pulled Triclops to his feet.
"C'mon! This isn't ALL there is to outside!" She said, pulling Triclops after her as she ran down the field, occasionally tripping over a rock or her own feet, but getting up as soon as she had tripped, dragging Triclops all the way.:
So... I guess you can see what your mother was like... She was always like that: As long as I knew her, she would always be herself and it never failed to make me feel better. She taught me how to count, how to do math, how to read, how to tie my shoes... she was MY DeeJay, if that makes sense to you, but she was also a mother, a friend... everything.
And whenever I felt bad, she would be there for me to talk to. If an overseer beat me especially hard compared to other days, I'd talk to her in a dream and tell her about it, and... I don't know how, but she managed to send me a healing spell through the dream to my actual body and... well, needless to say, it would make me feel better.
The day that one officer raped me, you should have... well, maybe you shouldn't have seen her- that could have been potentially bad for you health... but she was FURIOUS! And when your mother was furious, heads rolled. I'm not kidding, the next morning, something overtook one of the stormtroopers fired his blaster at the man and... well... let's just say the incident from the day before NEVER happened again...
One night, she even told me about the onmyojistu abilities she had. It's actually related to the fact she was a Jedi; You and Commander Skywalker should also be able to do the things she could do. According to her, being an onmyoji was the same thing as being a Jedi, except 'onmyoji' was just a different name for the Jedi in a different culture.
Some of the things she could do were quite amazing. She could talk with spirits, not to mention see them, she had abilities to shield herself from attacks as well as from other Jedi and Sith probing into her mind, she could manipulate water, wind, flame, soil, plants, spirits, light, and shadows... though only slightly, but with the little control she had, she could attack others with them, and then there was this one ability she had from being heir to her mother's clan, but she never told me what it was. Something about it being a family secret...
She couldn't cook worth squat, though. I don't know WHERE you get it from, because you've seen how horrible I am in the kitchen. Your mother... at least she could operate a nanowave oven and heat up something like a pre-made dinner or leftovers. And, okay, her cookies and sandwiches were good, but either than that, if you saw her cooking something, you RAN, you HID, and you didn't come out until the fumes had cleared. She made curry once (this was in a dream, of course, but her skills reflected from reality into her dreamscape) and she mistook my gagging noises to mean it was so good, I was speechless.
...Stop laughing! It wasn't funny!
Kendalina loved to sing, too. She taught me a few songs, and believe me, they've STUCK with me... I... no, I'm not singing! You just want to laugh at me because I'm tone deaf!
What kinds of songs... I don't know how to describe them... she was very fond of songs for their melody rather than their lyrics. There was ONE song about a boy lusting after his girlfriend's mother, but she liked it because it was 'Good to dance to.' Sometimes, your mother drove me up a wall with music like that.
Well, that's another reason why I don't sing: I'd ruin it because I don't remember all the lyrics and the melody would be wasted...
What else? Oh... there's just so much... she was smart, she was fun, she was clever, she was determined, she was... well, what do you think of yourself, Ken? You're so much like her... You know, most children roll their eyes and say 'yeah, yeah' whenever someone tells them they're so much like one of their parents... Well, you haven't been told that very much, have you?
But, now, you... at least I had Kendalina whenever I pulled her into my dreamscape... you'd never seen humans except in holographs until you were twelve...
Don't tell me you've been alone your entire life...
So... yeah, this had to have a LITTLE fluff in it... Hee... I'm a sucker for romance.
And if Kendalina seems like a kind of Mary Sue, don't yell at me for that! I mean... Triclops is telling Ken about his MOTHER! Of course he's going to try and put her in the best light he can! And if you didn't get the part where it switches from 1st person Triclops to 3rd person on Kendalina and Triclops... the idea is Triclops creates a dreamscape and pulls Ken in and shows him when he met Kendalina.
Urg... sorry if this turns out as just a chunk of text with no paragraph breaks. Lately, has been doing that with my fics: text files, no paragraph breaks. Html files, no special text formats... just a hellish nightmare for me!