8. Real People
They'd be leaving in a few minutes. Tass cheked her bag again. Books, clothes, holopads...she had almost everything, except money. She went to the secret compartment in her room, and took out some of the creditchips. The holopic of her and Nerra was still in there, she noticed. Hmmmm.
She went outside to meet Dekabyn. He was waiting at the door, along with her parents. Nerra wasn't there.
Lelleri kissed her goodbye, much to Tass's annoyance. "You two be careful," she said.
"Contact us when you get there," Jekk said.
Tass nodded.
"Bye, Mrs and Mr Vari," Dekabyn said.
"Bye, Mum and Dad!" Tass said. "And say bye to Nerra for me as well, okay?"
Jek nodded. Dekabyn led Tass out of the door, and closed it behind him.
"Okay...let's go find the airtrain station..."
They started walking.
On board the train, Tass thought to herself for a while. She wondered what the Jedi Temple would look like. She'd seen pictures, but maybe it'd been changed since then.
"I've never been to the other side of Coruscant before," Dekabyn said thoughtfully. "Not ever."
"I did once," Tass said. "But I was so little I don't remember it anymore."
"Tell your mum thanks from me," Dekabyn said. "For paying for all this."
"Don't worry, I already did."
They watched the world fly by the window for a few minutes, and then Tass said something else.
"What if they don't want to help Faith?"
"What do you mean?"
"Like, if they say she should have come by herself or something..."
"Why?"
"It's just...the old Jedi Order were pretty...dismissive of this sort of stuff. I know they've probably changed...but...history repeats itself. Or something."
Dekabyn looked as though he had no idea what she was on about.
"Never mind," she said lamely.
Dekabyn nodded, and then after a few minutes he spoke.
"I was thinking. About all that stuff I said..."
"What, you mean...the other day? About...oh, you know? Taking sides and all that?"
"Yeah."
"But we decided what we were going to do."
"I was thinking about your brother."
"Oh," Tass said. "What, him starting fights and things?"
"Yeah."
"Nothing will happen," she reassured him. "He's just....oh, he's just growing up and making an idiot out of himself while doing so."
Dekabyn actually smiled at that. "Oh. Well, who doesn't?"
They let the subject drop.
The train continued on. It wound through skyscapers and past the place where construction work was taking place. Dekabyn glanced out of the window thoughtfully. Tass took out her project, and started typing things out. Dekabyn turned away from the window.
"Wow. That's going to be one seriously good project, you know."
She blushed. "Thanks."
"You really got into it, didn't you?"
"Yeah."
Dekabyn didn't ask why, but she decided to tell him anyway. "It just feels different now. Like these were all real people with real flaws and virtues and...stuff. Like some people say that Kenobi wasn't a good teacher, but others say the destruction of the whole order was down to Anakin alone, and some people say Yoda was wrong...and so on."
Dekabyn nodded. Tass could tell he was impressed.
"What do you think, Tass?"
"About what?"
"Well...about the whole thing. Who was right and who was wrong and things."
"Er..." No-one had really asked her that yet. "Well...you said once that the old Jedi were corrupt...but think about it, they all died, even the kids. And the kids didn't do anything."
Dekabyn actually laughed. "Well, that's funny, because when we were talking about that whole Tusken thing, you said it was alright that the kids died in that case."
"I did not," Tass said crossly. "I said it was evil!"
Dekabyn raised an eyebrow.
"I did!"
"Alright, alright," he said, but he was grinning like he'd just proved her wrong. She had an urge to smack him.
"This whole thing, it was a war, Dekabyn. Everyone was in a war. The Rebellion and the Empire, the Jedi and Sith...even the Tuskens and the settlers were sort of warring. And...y'know, this is the weird thing...we keep disagreeing and I dunno if we'd have even been on the same side in some of those situations."
She realised before she'd even said it all that Dekabyn was likely to be hurt by that. Why was she saying it, it wasn't important...but Dekabyn was staring at her. Just staring.
"Tass, Regimesh really doesn't know what a student he's got in his class."
She stared back at him. It turned into a staring contest and they both giggled a little. Then Tass sighed.
"Forget what I just said, Dek...I'd try to be on your side."
"I know," he said, almost casually. "But if we were actually born about a hundred years ago, we might have been born in different places and never met at all. And then we might have wound up on different sides and just been anonymous soldiers shooting at each other."
This unnerved her slightly.
"I could've been a stormtrooper, and you could've been a Rebel," he went on.
"You wouldn't work for the Empire!"
"But I was born in a different place...who knows?"
This all seemed quite big and insane to Tass. Dekabyn looked like he wanted her to say something to put his mind at rest. She just shook her head. "There's no way you...or a different-universe you- would ever be on the same side as something like the Emperor."
"Thank you, Tass," Dekabyn said quietly, and she wished she knew what he was thinking.
The hotel wasn't a particularly flash one. It wasn't all that nice, really. The enterance hall looked like it could do with a good coat of paint, and one of the windows was broken. Droids were working on it, but they weren't moving very fast.
"Name?" the tired-looked Mon Calamari at the desk asked.
"Tass Vari,"
"Oh yeah," she said, checking her datapad. "You're in room 1138."
Tass nodded, but from behind her Dekabyn asked. "What about me?"
"Only one room's booked," she said with a shrug.
Tass and Dekabyn looked at each other. Dekabyn sighed.
"I guess your mum forgot I was coming. Or something."
"She had a lot on her mind."
"I'll sleep out in the corridor, no-one will notice."
"Don't be stupid," Tass said, and added, as soon as they were out of earshot of the receptionist, "someone'll probably shoot you in your sleep. You can sleep in my room, on the floor, alright?"
That was exactly what he wound up doing.
