Echoes

by inwardtransience

The Jedi thought that, by turning their greatest enemy into an unwitting assassin, they could grasp victory from the jaws of defeat, and safeguard the Republic, the democratic and egalitarian principles at its foundation, for future generations. Really, they should have just killed her.

14. Drawing Lines — IV

Sesai wasn't certain he had the right address. Hell, he wasn't even entirely certain he was in the right building — even after several years on Coruscant, he still got lost far too easily. But while the bright gleaming white tile and shuffling leaves of the hallway were completely unfamiliar, Lesami's burning presence in the Force a few metres before him was unmistakable.

It was quite simply impossible to miss Lesami, after all.

A brief moment after tripping the tone, he faintly felt something stretch in his general direction, a thin filament of power reaching into the door. It clicked open, so Sesai pushed inside.

He'd never been to Lesami's apartment before — she had only gotten it a couple weeks ago, shortly after landing her apprenticeship. (Apparently Kreia had recommended Lesami move out of the Temple, which Sesai took as a good sign, that her new Master understood her that well.) He hadn't been entirely surprised to learn the neighborhood it was in, given how her filthy rich father had been trying to buy her forgiveness for years now. He still thought this sort of thing was just kind of weird — his people had a very different idea of luxury than many beings' — but he hadn't thought it his business to comment.

He couldn't deny it was sort of nice-looking. The room he entered into was covered in white carpets and walls, almost too white, the morning sun pouring through the wall of east-facing windows — through which he could see the towers of the capitol district, the dome of the Senate just visible at the right edge — setting the whole room to a nearly painful glow. (He'd been here long enough the sun, significantly brighter than Zelle, didn't bother him day to day, but occasionally he was reminded.) The room was very clean and very pretty, but rather empty, still appearing un-lived-in. Save for the stools before the high counter blocking off what, by the glimpse he caught of appliances and cabinets, appeared to be the kitchen and a single dark sofa and a couple boxes stacked in the corner the sizeable room was almost entirely empty.

Lesami was in here, though, and she wasn't alone. Somewhat to Sesai's surprise — Lesami could be so overwhelming, he hadn't sensed anyone else — Nisotsa was here too, standing over by the sofa, halfway through getting properly dressed. (Jedi robes did have so many tedious layers.) While she was at least presentable, Lesami really wasn't, leaning against the counter in a housecoat, just cinching the belt just as Sesai pulled the door closed behind him.

He blinked at her. "Were you just naked a second ago?"

With a quirked eyebrow that was far too powerfully mocking for how mild the expression was, Lesami drawled, "Don't sound too disappointed, Sesai."

"I'm surprised she bothered finally putting that on," Nisotsa grumbled through the cloth covering her head. A yank had the thing straightened out, her face appearing again, light hair turned disheveled and fuzzy. Cutting a sharp glare at Lesami, "She's been lounging about without a stitch on near since we got here last evening."

Lesami shrugged. "My flat, my rules."

"I should come here more often."

Rolling her eyes, Nisotsa muttered something that sounded very much like, "Bloody Zeltrons." Then at full volume, "Anyway, I have to get going if I don't want to get lectured at for being late. Are you coming up to the Temple at all today?"

"I wasn't planning on it." Lesami sank into one of the stools, picked a steaming mug up off the counter; her eyes followed Nisotsa as she walked over, pulling a biscuit out of a crinkly foil bag a short distance away. "I still need to fill this place out a bit, Kreia's giving me a day off to go shopping."

Chewing, Nisotsa stalled a moment. "Mm. If you're going to keep inviting me over, either get a second bed or some bloody nightclothes."

"I will weigh my options."

"Right. See you, Sami, Sesai."

"Toodles, love."

Sesai blinked — that sounded...weird. Higher and smoother than her voice normally was, coming off a bit...

"Mm-hmm." With an exaggerated roll of her eyes, Nisotsa slipped past Sesai, vanished out the door.

As soon as she was gone, he asked, "You trying to get in her pants?"

Lesami gave him a flat, blank sort of look. "Is that the only thing Zeltrons think about?"

"Well, not the only thing." Smirking the whole way, he sauntered over, dropping into the stool next to her. "But, well, the lounging about without a stitch on, as she so adorably put it — that posh Alderaanian accent she has, honestly — especially since you were apparently sharing a bed last night... Granted, I'm still not the most comfortable with Core culture, but that seems off to me. And that toodles, love a second ago was probably the most flirty-sounding thing I've ever heard you say. What else am I supposed to think?"

"I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Uh-huh." Sesai smirked. "Word of advice? Just come right out and say it. Not exactly being subtle as it is, but I wouldn't be surprised if most Jedi need a solid knock upside the head to get the message. We're taught to ignore that sort of thing entirely, after all."

"Should I ever decide I do want to seduce Nisotsa, I'll certainly remember your unsolicited meddling."

"I'm sure — I am hard to forget like that."

Letting out a harsh sigh, Lesami's eyes tipped up to the ceiling for a second. "What are you doing here, Sesai?"

"If you didn't want me dropping by, you shouldn't have given me your address."

"I knew you would at some point. I just didn't think it would be a weekday morning. Don't you have somewhere else to be?"

He shrugged — he would certainly miss a couple lectures while he was here, but he didn't at all care. Why the fuck did they even need to take physics and astrogation courses, that's what computers were for. Ayrsa would probably get annoyed at him for blowing off lectures, again, but he should be well familiar with Sesai being Sesai by now. "Yeah, but you're more fun than Kurshaq."

Seemingly despite herself, Lesami let out a short guffaw. "I should hope so. That monotone drone he has, I swear..."

"Yeah, when I should be shut up in a room with him, well..." A smirk pulling at his lips, he let one hand drop, his fingers gently falling on Lesami's bare leg, just above her knee. She glanced down for an instant before meeting his eyes again, one eyebrow slowly stretching upward. Switching to Anashije, he muttered, "I'd much rather be shut up in a room with you."

Matching the language change with natural ease, "You're ridiculous, you know that."

"I have been informed." He let his fingers wander, softly tracing over her skin, up to the hem of her housecoat and back again, little circles. Taking a casual sip of her caf, she shot a narrow glare at him over the mug — though she didn't do anything to remove his hand, so he just grinned back. "I mean, we're friends, aren't we?"

Lesami rolled her eyes, muttering what was probably a curse in a language he didn't understand. "This isn't Zeltros, Sesai. Most people don't just go around fucking their friends."

"I know that." It did still happen here, of course, but it wasn't nearly as common as he knew it was back home. Hell, Zeltrosi expected close friends to have sex occasionally, it was perfectly normal to them. (It still sort of confused him that other people didn't expect it, honestly.) "But, I don't suppose you're romantically invested in Nisotsa, either."

"Well, no..."

"If you have to talk to Alek about it first, that's fine. I thought I'd, you know, make it clear I'm not just playing around." He was pretty sure she caught the reference: he had nearly kissed her a few times at the Temple — he was a teenager, and she was fun, it was instinct, he couldn't help it — and she always stopped him and told him to stop playing around. With significant glances around them, because the Masters obviously wouldn't approve.

That was the message he'd taken from it anyway. The message he'd taken from Lesami giving him the address of her private apartment had also seemed perfectly clear, but it was becoming obvious she hadn't meant it the way he'd taken it. Oops?

Oh well. If she was firmly opposed to it she would have reacted way worse than this.

But now she was giving him a confused sort of frown, slowly blinking. "Uh... Why would I need to talk to Alek?"

"I just figured, he doesn't like me much, he probably wouldn't be happy about it." To be perfectly accurate, Alek didn't dislike him — he simply took absolutely no efforts to hide how attractive he found Lesami, that Alek didn't like at all. Which was silly, but Sesai suspected Zeltrons were physically incapable of feeling that sort of jealousy, he would never get it.

"No, he probably wouldn't, but it's also none of his bloody business, is it?" There was a note of heat on her voice, somewhere between irritation and exasperation. Directed at Sesai, he was pretty sure, but perhaps not all of it.

Which was really confusing. "Wait. Aren't you two a thing?"

With another flat, unamused sort of look, she said, "You think I spent the last twelve hours looking to shag Nisotsa, but you also think Alek and I are a thing?"

Sesai shrugged. "Well, I figured he just didn't have a problem with Nisotsa. That happens, right? I'm pretty sure polyamorous humans exist, anyway."

"Ah..." Lesami blinked at him some more. Then, as his fingers took another pass high up her thigh, she shifted in her seat, cleared her throat, took another sip from her mug. (Sesai noticed this one wasn't quite as smooth and casual as the last.) "Yes, polyamourous humans exist. No, Alek and I are not a thing. He's trying to be a good little Jedi at the moment," she added, a trace of annoyance just noticeable. That one definitely wasn't directed at him.

"Huh." Weird. They weren't subtle about their mutual interest at all, enough he'd figured something was going on.

The words were on the edge of his tongue, that she should really do something about the bitterness he felt echoing in the air around her. It had nothing to do with Alek, really, that familiar malaise that had been following her since the day they'd met. She really shouldn't just...ignore it, as everyone had evidently been doing for years now. But he ultimately stopped himself. He wasn't here to make her feel miserable — quite the opposite, in fact. If he suggested she consider seeking psychiatric treatment it'd just result in an uncomfortable argument, it wouldn't end well for anybody.

So, ignoring all that, about her and Alek, if there wasn't anything going on there, for whatever silly, inane reason, "Then there shouldn't be a problem, right?" His fingers drifted higher, pushing the hem up—

Drawing in a sharp breath through her teeth, Lesami's hand snapped down against his wrist, locking his hand in place, high up her thigh. She stared blankly out toward the bank of windows for a moment, brow stitched with a soft frown. A few seconds of silence, then she muttered, "I'm not sure that would be a good idea, Sesai."

"Why not? We are friends, aren't we?"

Lesami snorted out a laugh, shook her head, lips twitching with a rueful smile. Switching back to Basic, "Bloody Zeltron."

"Mm-hmm."

With a long, thin sigh, her other hand came up, running slowly through her hair. Her eyes flicked to his for a moment, then looked down, her pale skin and white robe throwing his hand on her thigh into sharp contrast. She was still for a moment, silent and staring, the air about her churning, clearly thinking about something.

Because Zeltrons were cheaters like that, she felt her come to a decision before she said or did anything, the unseen tension about her lifting away, replaced with an anxious, giddy lightness that brought a vicarious nervous smile to his face.

"Fuck it." Her hand gripping his loosened, and she turned in her seat a little, facing more directly toward him, uncrossing her legs as she went. "As long as it's clear we are friends and not...anything else..." With a crooked, coy sort of smile, she glanced up at him through her lashes. "I suppose there are worse people to be shut up in a room with."

Sesai laughed.

---

Cina was drawn away from sleep, fitfully, reluctantly.

For long, innumerable moments, she lay there, not truly thinking, not truly anything. She felt all too heavy, all too, too tired. She didn't want to be awake, she really, really didn't.

Eventually, she noticed she was also all too warm. Not so warm it was uncomfortable, exactly, but warmer than she should reasonably expect to be on the ship. She also felt rather more constricted than she should, things hemming her in from both sides, warm things.

Warm bodies.

Finally waking up enough for her brain to work properly, it only took a second to remember who the one behind her — flush against her back nearly shoulder to knee, one arm flung over her hips, the occasional breath tickling her neck — must be. It was the one in front of her — a narrow distance away, mostly perceived as a weight on her pillow, the soft hiss of breath, warm and slightly scratchy cloth under her forearm — that she couldn't explain. She remembered bringing Rhysam back here, but last she remembered they'd been alone.

Reluctantly, she opened her eyes — and found Sasha lying there, her cheek centimetres from the tip of Cina's nose.

Her heart jumping into her throat, Cina started jerking away, then immediately stopped herself, before she could whip away the arm under her pillow, which would shake Sasha awake. She took a long, stuttering breath, trying to be quiet as possible.

"Mm, morning." Rhysam laid a soft kiss at the base of her neck.

Which she wouldn't ordinarily have a problem with, if there wasn't a little kid in bed with them at the moment. Gingerly, Cina tipped her shoulder back, until she could see Rhysam behind her. He was just sleepily smiling at her, apparently unbothered by the situation. "How long has she been here?"

Rhysam shrugged. "Since just a few minutes after you fell asleep, I think."

"Shite." Cina rubbed at a cheek with her free hand, trying to suppress the squirming nausea crawling up her throat.

"What's the big deal? I thought she crawled into bed with you all the time."

She opened her eyes again to throw him a sharp look — wasn't that bloody obvious? "Rhysam, we're both naked in here." She could still smell sex on the air, even, it was just... This was just...

And Rhysam had the nerve to shrug again, helplessly, like being uncomfortable with this was completely incomprehensible and unreasonable. Because he was a silly little berk like that. "She's a Mandalorian, Cina. They don't make a habit of hiding sex from their children. I'm sure she knows what we were doing, and I'm sure she doesn't care."

Cina opened her mouth to snap at him — then abruptly cut herself off, frowned at the wall behind him. Because, well, he was right about that. And even if he weren't, it probably wouldn't occur to him to be uncomfortable about this either — it wasn't unusual for Zeltrosi families to all sleep in one room, and they didn't take pains to insulate children from sex either. They weren't to participate, obviously, Zeltrons were very strict about things like incest and consent. Perhaps even more careful about the former than they had to be, considering many "siblings" weren't actually blood-related (group marriage was funny like that). Given his cultural background, expecting him to be as uncomfortable with this as she was would be unreasonable.

But it just... She couldn't help it, it just felt really creepy.

"You realize she was in the room for part of it."

"You're not helping." Cina shivered, something cold and sick running through her, only for a second before she got distracted. "Wait, are you sure? I didn't feel her there."

Rhysam smirked. "Yes, well, you were distracted. My head was between your legs at the time, and I've noticed that—"

Before he could get out whatever annoyingly self-congratulatory thing he was about to say, Cina smacked his chest with the back of her hand. "Oh, shut up, you. You don't have to sound so happy with yourself."

"Why not? You sounded plenty happy with me, it—"

Cina smacked him again.

It did seem Rhysam was trying to keep his chuckling as quiet as possible, but it wasn't enough anyway. There was a soft moan from Cina's other side, a shuffling, an impression of movement carrying through the pillow. And then a faint squeak, the bed noticeably jolting as a flash of power burned through the air. When Cina glanced back in Sasha's direction, she was already up, standing a few metres away, and completely invisible.

Apparently, crawling into bed with Cina and a man she'd just been shagging was perfectly fine, but lying that close to her when they were both awake was uncomfortable. Cina just didn't get Sasha sometimes.

Must be some kind of masochist, surrounding herself with Mandoade and Zeltrons...

After a few awkward minutes, they managed to get themselves dressed and out of the room — at least, Cina was uncomfortable, Sasha and Rhysam didn't seem nearly as bothered as she was. Sasha was somewhat more wary than most mornings, but they were usually alone most mornings, she still wasn't entirely comfortable around Rhysam. And he just seemed amused with her, irritating little shite. She couldn't even explain why, she wasn't usually the modest type, but she was peculiarly aware that Sasha was there watching, had to fight the urge to keep herself covered, which was just unhelpful, couldn't get dressed if she couldn't bloody get out of bed, she was being so silly. She just...

She wasn't used to there being little kids around the morning after, okay? She had no fucking clue what to do with this, it was just bloody weird.

The smirking, gleeful giggles Mission met them with the moment they walked into the main room wasn't helping. Shooting her a brief exasperated glance on her way toward the caf, Cina snapped, "Don't you start now."

She was facing away, but Cina could still hear the grin on Mission's voice. (Of course, there was also the giddy bubbling emanating from her direction, but Cina didn't need the Force to know either.) "I ain't starting nothing."

"Jumping down the poor girl's throat, Cina, I mean really." Rhysam's voice shifted to a false whisper, hissing easily loud enough for Cina and Zaalbar in the kitchen to hear it. "Besides, I already finished it, if you know what I mean."

Mission tried to snort and laugh at the same time, coming out as a harsh snrk noise. "You're awful."

"Takes one to know one, sweetie."

"Uh hurr hurr."

Starting up the grinder with a sigh, Cina leaned a little closer to Zaalbar — pan-frying something, Cina could hardly tell what looking at it, but it always turned out fine. Under cover of the noises around them, she muttered, "Bringing him back here was a terrible decision. They're going to get on like a trash fire, he'll be a horrible influence."

He was giving her a flat, rueful sort of look, but his eyes, half-hidden by his heavy, bushy brows, were still sparkling with unvoiced laughter. "Funny, I thought the same thing about you when first we met."

"You're hilarious."

"If you say so. Seems a step up, in fact — this man hasn't even made anything explode yet."

"As I recall, that explosion saved your ungrateful arse."

"All the same."

She shook her head, grumbling, as sarcastically as she could manage, "Kids these days, I swear."

About a half an hour later — a time mostly filled with Cina trying to coax Sasha to actually eat at the table while Rhysam and Mission traded increasingly crude innuendos — Cina was walking back up to the Enclave, for what felt like the hundredth time. Sasha was invisibly trailing her as always, though Rhysam pacing her was new.

She wondered if any of the Jedi would comment on what had obviously just happened. Or...would it even be obvious to Jedi? She wasn't certain, they could be shockingly oblivious about normal person things sometimes.

She hoped nobody would make a point of being a bitch about it. Her patience was running perilously thin these days — it might be fun at the time, but she'd probably regret snarking back when it inevitably came around to bite her in the are. Stupid bloody Jedi and their idiotic ascetic shite...

"You okay over there?"

Cina blinked, glanced over at Rhysam. He'd drifted a little closer over the last seconds, looming over her shoulder, a peculiarly... She wasn't certain what that expression was, actually. Something soft and hesitant, anyway. "Ah... Sure? Why?"

A crooked frown twitched across his face for a second, before quickly vanishing — too quickly to be natural, he must have suppressed it on purpose. He opened his mouth, but didn't actually say anything, gaze turning distant and thoughtful.

He abruptly jerked to a stop, wrapping a hand around her upper arm to hold her back. "Rhysam, what—"

"You don't have to lie to me, Cina." He'd gone uncharacteristically serious, more solemn than Cina had ever seen him, face intensely blank, voice low and thick, mind hard and sharp. "I am a bloody Zeltron, you know. I can tell what you're feeling."

He'd picked up on it, then, that damn heavy cloud of misery she just couldn't bloody shake. Awesome. Cina forced out a long, heavy sigh, her free hand running through her hair — she really didn't want to talk about this. "Is there any way we can just...not? Just, forget about it." Oh, they were speaking Anashije again, when had that happened. "I don't even notice most of the time myself, honestly."

A reluctant smile quirked one corner of his lips. "Just because you're accustomed to feeling awful doesn't make it okay."

She rolled her eyes. "Well, no, but what the fuck do you expect me to do about it? I assume it's something carrying over from before the Jedi screwed with my head — I can't exactly work out whatever issues the old me might have had if I can't remember them, can I?"

"No, of course you can't. Which would be why I wasn't going to recommend you just talk about it."

"That..." She just frowned at him for a second, blankly blinking. The faintly amused smile he was wearing wasn't making it easier for her to figure out what the fuck he was talking about, bloody pretty bastard. "Huh?"

He smirked. "Very articulate there, Cina."

"Fuck you."

"Yes, you did that already."

"Don't make me hurt you."

"You did that already, too. Seriously now, though," he said, the teasing smirk abruptly wiping away. "If you don't know what the problem is, I think it's a pretty easy conclusion to make that it's not, just, something cognitive, that can be talked out. Maybe it started that way, a long time ago, but if a brain does something for long enough it gets stuck in that pattern — feel shitty long enough, and your brain forgets how to not feel shitty. At a certain point, the issue isn't a cognitive one anymore, but a medical one."

She blinked at him for another couple seconds. "You're suggesting I...go see a psychiatrist."

"That's exactly what I'm suggesting."

...Wow. The nerve of this one. Maybe fucking him had been a bad idea. "That's really not necessary, Rhysam. I'm handling it just fine."

"I'm not denying that," he said, with a too-casual shrug that said he was so denying that. "I'm just saying, you shouldn't need to. And maybe you don't."

"Where do you get off?" Rhysam moved to speak, something about him feeling light and bubbly, so she snapped, "Don't answer that with another bloody innuendo, so help me, I will throw you into that wall."

Bafflingly, Rhysam looked to be fighting a grin. Such a silly boy, why did she subject herself to these things...

"I did not ask for your opinion, this is absolutely none of your business, and if you want me to continue speaking to you you will drop it, now."

"It is my business, though."

"Rhysam—"

"We are friends, aren't we?"

Her irritated retort she'd barely started died in her throat. She didn't really know how to respond to that. Because, they sort of were, weren't they? She certainly had spent more of her free time around Rhysam these last few weeks than virtually anybody else — she was at the Enclave for far too much of the day, and he was practically the only Jedi she knew who was really worth talking to. So, that probably wasn't an entirely inaccurate word to use. She just... It just felt kinda...

She didn't know what word she was looking for, really. Humiliating wasn't quite right. Vulnerable was closer, she guessed, but not perfect. She just...

Sometimes, things she said or felt that confused herself, she got the impression she'd once been a very private, very proud person. Conversations like this just... It felt like failing somehow, it would feel like failing, to...she didn't know, admit she couldn't handle...anything, really. That she couldn't do it herself, that she needed help, it felt like losing.

Cina hated losing.

She drew in a long, shaky breath, letting it out in an even shakier sigh. What the fuck was old-her's problem, anyway? She was only human, and human brains were just shite sometimes — she certainly knew enough about psychology and neurology to have that figured out. And whatever situation she'd been in before she felt she'd needed to be...be whatever, she didn't know, it didn't matter anymore. She didn't have to...

She shouldn't need to handle it.

"I..." She swallowed, trying to force down the silly pointless nausea while she was at it. "I'm not promising anything, but I'll think about it."

Rhysam just grinned, easy and bright as anything. Then he turned on his heel and started off again, pulling her along with him.

She would like to say she was going to get back at him for that uncomfortable nonsense, but she was pretty sure she was going to end up fucking him again tonight, so.

---

"The 'enlightened' mind hasn't truly rejected delusion if delusion is built into the frame of the very concept of enlightenment."

Sitting in their usual corner of the library, Dorak blinked at her, his mind feeling somehow even more cool and placid than usual. He simply stared at her for long moments, seemingly too blindsided to even come up with a response. Finally, low and slow, "I'm not certain I follow."

"Hmm." Cina pulled back a moment, slouching in her stiff, plastic chair — Jedi simply couldn't have comfortable furniture, of course — mulling over exactly how to get the point of her argument across. It was actually a very simple argument, one anyone with passing familiarity with contemporary political and ethical philosophy would grasp intuitively.

The problem was, Jedi thinkers were often shockingly naïve. They were very thoroughly educated, of course, with some significant focus given to ethical philosophy. But it was an institution, a very old institution, burdened as many such institutions were with foundational dogma and existential pressures. While Jedi were quite well-read, their education was in important ways narrow — deep, yes, but they were left completely ignorant of certain influential modes of thought.

Having read a number of Jedi thinkers now, how they made their arguments, even how their Code was ordered, Cina was getting the very clear impression that Jedi were almost entirely ignorant of idealistic nihilism, neostructuralism, and material fatalism. (After all, it was against the Order's self-interest to educate their members in modes of thought that too strongly contradicted their foundational ideology.) Which made formulating a critique of Dorak's argument presupposing an understanding of those ideas very difficult.

"Okay." Cina's fingers tapped at the table a few more times, her frown slowly loosening. "Okay. A person's thinking is, in the main, lazy. This isn't a moral judgement, it's a consequence of evolutionary pressures — the tendency in all things is toward greater efficiency, as the creature that utilises resources most effectively is most likely to survive lean times, and thus most likely to propogate. Similarly, most beings have a tendency toward working with what they already have, what has worked in the past. There is a preference to form arguments and come to conclusions using known quantities already in evidence, to leave current beliefs and understandings unquestioned. All people are susceptible to this, no one can divest themselves of bias entirely."

By the slow, somewhat absent feel of Dorak's nodding, he didn't quite get the point. "Yes, that is so. We are to always be aware of our own limitations, to withhold judgement until we fully understand the particulars."

To a point, anyway — the charge to Deny Curiosity would seem to naturally limit any attempt to fully grasp a situation. But that wasn't the point at the moment. "Sure. But it never seems to occur to any of you that your entire way of thinking is built on flawed premises that should, at times, perhaps be questioned."

And there was that blank stare again.

"You have at least a fundamental understanding of physics. Elementary physics, I mean."

That didn't seem to make him any less confused, still flatly staring at her, but he said, "Yes, of course. It's a part of the standard curriculum."

"And neurology as well, I should think."

"The basics, yes. Biology varies too much between species for it to be worthwhile for any but Healers to spend extensive time on the subject, but I am familiar with the general idea."

Cina nodded. "Has it ever occurred to you that, given the predictable nature of the physical world and the machinery of our brains, that cognition itself may be, at least partially, deterministic?"

It took him a brief moment to respond, staring back at her, eyes and mind quiet and empty. "To a degree, perhaps. But the reality of the Force proves that the mind is not an entirely physical phenomenon."

"Not entirely, but it doesn't have to be. Part of our consciousness may be credited to something...spiritual, if you will, but part of it is certainly physical — there wouldn't be any real consequences to brain damage if it weren't, would there? It would seem, given that our brains function on physical processes that are in principle predictable based on its initial state and outside stimuli, that the output is also predictable. Perhaps not in the particulars, but in the general shape. Yes?"

"I can't reasonably disagree."

"Much as the core of Jedi teaching is fundamentally unreasonable."

That time, it wasn't just blank shock and confusion. Buried in the stillness, she caught a hint of something hotter from Dorak, a spark of uneasiness, concern. "I'm not certain I follow."

"The Jedi argue that someone can choose to strip themselves of..." Cina trailed off, trying to think of the best way to say it. All that shite always sounded so bloody ridiculous to her, she'd honestly not taken that much of it in, certainly not enough to have on hand a succinct way to summarise it all. "...you know, er, attachments, feelings, will. The self, essentially, enlightenment to the Jedi is the denial of all selfish interest in preference for the will of the Force, whatever that's supposed to mean. The thing is, that is physically impossible.

"Jedi are told they must excise themselves of all passions, be they positive or negative, but that is simply not how brains work. A person can learn to mediate external expression of emotion — assuming they have the self-control necessary, which is a capacity a person must be born with — but that doesn't make the emotion go away. No matter how much you meditate, or whatever, external stimuli will cause neural activity, which will prompt learned associations, which will cue the secretion of neurochemicals and hormones, which will be experienced as emotion. That is just how it works. It is inescapable, outside of catastrophic brain damage — which I'll grant isn't impossible, childhood psychological trauma could cause disassociation severe enough to preclude any subjective experience of the self, but I really hope that's not what the Order intend to effect in their members.

"To put it very plainly, Master, any Jedi who claims to have achieved the sort of enlightenment the Order requires is lying to themselves. The Jedi concept of 'enlightenment' is inherently delusional; therefore, the 'enlightened' mind, rather than having rejected delusion, has embraced it."

Dorak just stared at her, for a long silent moment, his face smooth and unmoving. Perhaps more than was entirely fair, she was a little impressed to feel that he was actually considering a response, something shifting in her sense of his thoughts, calmer and more thoughtful than she would have given someone in his place credit for. (She was assaulting the very foundation of his worldview and his own self-concept, after all.) Finally, he said, "Perhaps it is a misunderstanding of diction. Yes, it is true that the experience of emotion is entirely unavoidable, but it is not the experience of emotion itself that is problematic."

"You're going to say something about attachment, aren't you?" She did get a flat look at cutting him off, but he just answered with a pleasant nod. "Right. Have you ever considered the self-serving assumptions built into the definition of 'attachment' used by the Jedi? Jedi are, fundamentally, dedicated to the Order, to the Republic — to the Code, the ideology of the Order itself, their sense of achieving this enlightenment of yours. Convenient, that your attachment to these institutions and ideas and your own self-image are excluded from your definition."

Bafflingly, Dorak just seemed amused. He even smiled, thin and soft. "How can one achieve a state free of desire, when that state is itself desired? This isn't a new perspective. Though, you shouldn't speak this way to anyone else. It is anathema — it was decided long ago that such thoughts risk losing a minority to the Dark Side."

It took some effort to keep her eyes from rolling. "And Jedi dogma is evidently perfect as it stands — nobody ever leaves the Order at all ever. Besides, I'm not convinced the Dark Side exists."

There came the hint of unease from Dorak again, though it was tightly controlled this time too, didn't show at all on his face. "I find it hard to believe you haven't ever felt its presence."

"As a destructive, corruptive power outside of myself?" She shrugged. "No. If we are to say the Force is an expression of all life, we might call the actions and feelings that promote the well-being and propagation of life Light, and ones counter to the same Dark. One might then say that using the power of the Force out of destructive motivation to destructive ends might be called the 'Dark Side' — if we call the temptation to do such feeling its presence, then yes, of course I have. But that is a feeling I have, contained to myself, that I can choose whether or not I will act upon. Some people might not have the self-control necessary, I will grant that, but it is an issue of self-control, not one of resisting the influence of some evil aspect of reality itself. The idea is simply absurd."

"Well." Dorak let out a long sigh, eyes tipping up to the ceiling for a moment. "That is another minority viewpoint that has existed in the Order in the past. I do understand where you are coming from. However, it would be best if you do not speak of these thoughts. I feel I will not be able to convince you, set in your views as you are, but I ask you to not...complicate matters for the other students."

Cina snorted. "Yes, I suppose it is harder to brainwash adults, isn't it?"

That just immediately started another argument, of course. She'd known it would, and she probably shouldn't have said it, but he had just said more than once to keep this heresy between the two of them. He probably wouldn't go blabbing about it.

Besides, watching the old bugger squirm was kind of funny.

---

Despite all the spiritualist philosophising the Jedi liked to wrap it up in, this Force magic shite wasn't actually that complicated.

They had all their complex jargon and traditions and such, of course, and she was expected to know...not all of it, but at least enough to make it through a conversation, to be able to talk about this stuff in a way anybody else could understand. Anybody else who also knew the jargon, anyway, which would just be Jedi. Not that that was at all unique to the Jedi — any community organised around anything for any purpose developed its own language to discuss matters particular to that community, that was simply how people worked. If Cina wanted to, she could talk for hours in obscure academic speech that would be completely opaque to anyone who'd never spent any time in a graduate linguistics or sociology programme, it wasn't even difficult. Cramming roughly a decade and a half of education into the space of a couple months meant she was essentially being beaten over the head with the entirety of their internal culture all at once and expected to keep up, but the experience wasn't significantly different from walking over to the economics department and sitting in on a lecture, when it came down to it.

Walking into a Bendu monastery would be a better comparison, she guessed, but they didn't tend to lecture at people. Part of that whole universalism thing they had going.

But anyway, the point was, the way Jedi talked about this stuff almost made it all seem far more complicated than it actually was. They had names for everything, and long formalised processes about how everything was supposed to be done — on the actual magic part, anyway, they were very big on the spiritual nonsense when passively sensing things — which as far as Cina could tell was all completely unnecessary.

After all, she hadn't known any of this shite about anakeresis and image potential and transobjectivism and whatever else when she'd thrown her cousin across the library. So far as she could tell, it was all academic posturing and superfluous philosophising. Which, again, wasn't at all unique to the Jedi — some of the nonsense linguists wrote about, honestly...

It wasn't at all difficult, when it came down to it. Once she could feel a thing, through her ridiculous Jedi magic sixth sense thing, she could do pretty much whatever she wanted with it.

Theoretically. The Jedi might make it sound more complicated than it was, but that didn't mean it was necessarily simple.

Moving things around without actually touching them? That wasn't difficult at all. She just kind of... Well, honestly, it was far more difficult to explain how she did it than to actually do it (which was also kind of her point). It wasn't like she was actually pushing or lifting or holding things, that was just...sort of what it felt like. Sort of. Instead of just touching everything with that weird sixth sense thing, like countless fingers brushing against her surroundings, actually using those non-existent hands to do things with. Except, they weren't hands, really, it wasn't like she imagined virtual fingers plucking things up or whatever, it just...

It just worked, okay? There was a reason the Jedi made up their own language to describe this shite, it was impossible to get the idea across clearly in layman's terms.

But Jedi magic shite got far more complicated than just telekinesis.

If Cina were to try to come up with a unified theory of Jedi magic shite, she would say it was all fundamentally the free manipulation of energy. Moving things with your mind was, essentially, transforming Force 'energy' into kinetic energy. That wasn't too conceptually difficult. When things started getting really complicated was when other forms of energy were taken into consideration. Electrical energy was also an option — Cina had started giving Kandosa static shocks when he was being a pain, it took him a couple days to figure out what was happening, hilarious. Jedi should be able to produce light and heat as well, but apparently the fine focus needed to pull that off was tricky. Manipulating light and heat wasn't too hard — because, of course, it was a simple matter to mess with whatever energy already existed in the environment, far easier than creating it from nothing — but she hadn't actually managed to produce those yet.

But those weren't the only kinds of energy. She had a theory, one she hadn't yet seen reflected in anything she'd heard or read: shouldn't it be possible to directly alter or even create matter? Mass was, after all, a form of energy. Elemental recombination had been developed millennia ago, processes to create a particular chemical substance out of an entirely different one through selective nuclear fusion and fission. Under sufficient temperatures and pressures, it was even possible to create undifferentiated quark–gluon plasma which could theoretically be condensed into whatever sort of baryonic matter one wanted (not that that was particularly useful, since most were unstable anyway). Shouldn't it be possible, then, to create matter ex nihilo through the Force, or transmute one element or chemical into another at will? Granted, the magnitude of the energies involved would be immense, and it would be all too uneasy for someone to accidentally incinerate themselves from waste heat, but still...

She wouldn't be playing with it — if she fucked up, she could only accidentally destroy the entire bloody town. But it was undeniably an interesting thought.

And the thought of turning one thing into another thing gave her other ideas.

Her lightsaber combat lessons were, in a way, far simpler than the rest of what they had her learning. There had been a bit of rote instruction at the beginning, with a bevy of terminology and basic forms and somesuch, but that was only intended to be a foundation to build from. Developing one's personal technique from there was an ad hoc process, done through practice and experience. This experience mostly consisted of getting burns all over the place, over and over and over. There was a big arena, sort of, under the Enclave, a wide, high-ceilinged room where various Jedi spent hours a day flailing at each other with practice lightsabers.

Personally, Cina thought the practice ones were really bloody neat — the technology behind a plasma 'blade' that, instead of slicing straight through flesh as easy as anything else, simply bounced off leaving a burn behind was actually far more complicated than a normal lightsaber. As she understood it, it involved some combination of force fields and repulsors, it was fascinating.

Of course, that meant practice lightsabers actually used more power than normal ones, and it was all complicated enough that designing one device that could perform both modes with any sort of reliability wasn't at all practical. But still, it was neat.

While Lestin had taught her the basics, he wasn't the person she got to practice against. Sometimes it was random Jedi at the Enclave — which was a bit humiliating, when she got her arse handed to her by small children, as had happened uncountable times by now — but her most frequent sparring partner was Bastila bloody Shan.

Cina still wasn't sure what she was supposed to think about Shan. She was an irritating little self-righteous chit, of course, with a dangerously over-inflated estimation of her own competence in anything that didn't have to do with ridiculous Jedi spiritualist nonsense. But Cina couldn't deny she'd been...less aggressively awful since they'd landed on Dantooine. No idea why. Maybe being on familiar ground had simply mellowed her out some, who knows. Which meant she trended more toward boring than annoying these days, but still, she got the impression Shan was trying to be nice to her.

Having spent most of her life a Jedi, she had no bloody clue how to go about being nice to someone, but it was clear she was trying. Which was just sort of confusing.

But Cina didn't waste too much time puzzling over the silly girl — she was unlikely to come to any satisfying answers, and it wasn't truly important enough to linger over. Instead, standing in one of the cleared spaces in the cavernous hall, Cina prepared herself for the coming fight, drawing slow breaths, bouncing slightly on the pads of her feet. She was almost painfully tense, a nervous energy she could hardly contain, while Shan just stared flatly back at her, completely impassive, her borrowed practice saber held loosely at her side, waiting.

Not that the difference in their composure was at all unexpected. Cina might find the magic shite angle intuitive and really quite easy, but the whole...swinging lightsabers...thing? That she wasn't at all comfortable with yet. She had every reason to be anxious, and Shan had none — after all, they both knew exactly who would be ending up with all the burns by the end.

Throwing caution to the winds, Cina darted forward, throwing the first blow of today's spar — it didn't really make any difference in the end, and if she left it up to Shan there was no telling how long they'd stand there staring at each other. She moved faster than should be possible, power flowing in from everywhere and nowhere granting her inhuman speed, but she wasn't quick enough. With a shuddering protest of tightly-focused repulsors and superheated air, a beam of pale white appeared directly in her path, halting Cina's own borrowed practice saber a foot from Shan's face. Shan slipped away to the right, turning Cina's weight aside, wrist turning to slash in toward Cina's stomach, but she'd already stepped back out of the way.

And Shan pressed forward, the heavy thrumming blade falling again and again, varying angle and direction, again and again unceasing. Cina managed to avoid or block all of them, but they were coming too fast, she could barely keep up, couldn't even attempt to counter properly.

Which was getting Cina very frustrated very quickly. It didn't help that, judging by the ease of her posture and the blankness of her face, Shan wasn't even trying very hard. And her casual, one-handed blows were shockingly heavy, crashing down on Cina so hard she had to work to halt them, gripping tight with both hands, leaning into the impacts with gritted teeth, even then sometimes forced to stumble back, the force just too much for her to easily take. Turning them aside was far easier, redirecting the blows instead of trying to absorb them, but sometimes Cina took them at the wrong angle, or Shan would catch her flat-footed, sometimes she just didn't have a choice in the matter.

That was just sort of odd, when she thought about it: Shan shouldn't be stronger than her. Okay, physically, maybe — Cina was rather small, and fit as she might be Shan had been actively fighting a bloody war until very recently — but once the Force got involved that really shouldn't matter so much. She was leaning into it a bit, pushing power not her own into her limbs, she could probably throw Kandosa across the hold one-handed, but Shan was still so much stronger. It was possible Shan was just more powerful than her, she guessed, but...

For some reason, Cina doubted it. Some intuition left over from the person she'd once been, perhaps something she'd picked up from the Jedi around her, she knew she was good at this Force shite. From those flashes of fear she still picked up from Shan on occasion, the unease from the Masters who actually knew who she was, she'd once been exceptional. There was simply no way Shan was just better than her.

Maybe this physical stuff had been her weak point — that felt right, somehow, she couldn't say how, it just seemed like a thing that should be true. And she was out of practice.

But it was still frustrating.

Frustrating enough that, when Shan finally caught her out, a streak of white coming in at Cina's right shoulder she knew she wouldn't be able to catch in time, she didn't even think. Bitter and annoyed and already growing shaky and tired, she didn't consider what she was doing, hardly even realising she was doing anything at all, she just did.

When the blade hit her, heat and light so intense it sang, she pulled it past her skin and into her, pulled so hard the practice lightsaber flickered, for a moment she was all too full of it, feeling light and hot and powerful, and she took it, she twisted it, and she pushed—

A brief crackle of electricity, the taste of ozone, a deafening bang, and Shan was struck in the chest by a flash of lightning, thrown to tumble limp to the floor.

For a moment, in the sudden, shocked silence of the hall, Cina could only stand there. Frozen, she stared at the steaming palm of her open hand, dumbfounded.

What the fuck...

She snapped out of it after a few seconds — she'd just, somehow, conjured a bolt of lightning out of nothing...and hit Shan with it. "Oh, shite." Her practice lightsaber dropped from her other hand, blinking out and falling to the floor, and she darted after Shan, sliding to her knees over her smoking form an instant after Lestin. "I'm sorry, I didn't— Is she okay?"

"It's alright, Apprentice, she'll be fine." With a deceptively casual flex of effort, Lestin ripped apart Shan's scorched robes with his bare hands, baring her chest. "Ah, yes. See," he said, one finger hovering over her reddened, sickeningly rippling skin, "she turned the worst of it aside at the last instant. Painful, yes, but not permanently damaging."

Cina frowned to herself. It looked like it had struck just there, a blackened and bleeding blotch along the ridge of her ribs, low on the right. What looked much like a burn, shiny and red and uneven, turned down toward her hip, the width of her hand before fracturing into a thousand much smaller filaments, switchbacking across her skin in a thick web, looking oddly like the tines of a snowflake. It didn't look pleasant, but it was rather less damage than she would have expected, with how loud and bright that flash of electricity had been. Shan must have done something — which was seriously bloody impressive, considering she would have had only a split second to do it in.

Though, she felt something...odd. She could always feel people there, through this ridiculous Force magic shite — she usually ignored it, it could be very distracting — but something about Shan felt different than usual. Slower, and quieter, but not any dimmer, somehow... "Is that a healing trance?" She'd heard of such things, had learned the theory, but she'd never actually seen one in action, or done it herself. The person did actually have to be injured for it to work properly, after all.

"Yes, it is — she went under instinctively, I would guess. She'll wake up much more quickly if we help her along," Lestin added, one hand moving over the burn, something in her sense of him shifting, focusing, flaring.

But Cina was having an idea. Before Lestin could hardly get going, she reached out for her abandoned practice saber, ordered it to come — the hilt slapped against her palm a second later. Turning it around backwards, Cina flicked it on, the beam of pale light snapping into existence, pointing back behind her. With a last long breath, preparing herself for the insane thing she was about to do as well as she could, she pressed the guarded blade against her hip. And she pulled.

Again, foreign energy poured into her, light and heat filled to bursting, and before she could draw in more than she could hold she turned it about and pushed, forcing it out into Shan. She didn't concern herself overmuch with the details, just willed Shan to be healed, threw everything she had at it — the Jedi noted that, much as could happen in physics at sufficiently high energy levels, throw enough power at something and the rules could be bent. Healing was normally a very delicate art, mostly done by coaxing the body to fix itself, requiring thorough anatomical knowledge and intense concentration to do properly. But throw enough power at it and, well, Cina had the feeling she could skip all that.

Under a sudden wash of white-gold light, the char vanished, the burns rapidly retreating, Shan's skin paling back to its original colour, in bare seconds once again smooth and unblemished. Cina cut off the flood of power, the light winking out, when Shan drew in a sharp breath, half-sitting before she noticed Lestin in the way, fell back again.

Then Cina winced, her arm spasming, the practice lightsaber tumbling to the floor again. She nearly clamped a hand over her hip before catching herself — shite, that hurt. She'd stopped pulling the heat out of the thing and, like a complete bloody idiot, forgot where it'd been coming from in the first place. Gritting her teeth against the flat, constant pain emanating from a thick strip across her leg, she glanced down, saw she'd held it there long enough she'd completely burned through her trousers. And she'd probably been pressing it down hard enough she'd probably— Oh, yep, looking through the gap, that was definitely a second-degree burn. Fuck.

Eh, whatever. She was still very new at this magic shite, but she could heal something that small no problem — a brief moment of concentration and she had her body working on it, the pain ticking down considerably after only a few seconds. (It'd be some hours before it was gone completely, this Jedi healing thing just numbed the area a bit while it was at it.) No big deal. This was nowhere near as bad as what Shan had had a second ago, and she'd done it to herself like an idiot, this was fine.

"Tutaminis."

She twitched, attention drawn away from her leg (and her own bloody stupidity) back up to Lestin. He was giving her an odd look, one of those ones he got now and again. Nostalgic, almost, unwillingly amused — she assumed he got that look when she reminded him of...well, herself, but she'd never asked after it. "What?"

"Transforming one form of energy into another. That's called tutaminis."

"Oh." She blinked. "I didn't even really mean to, it just kind of happened. I'll go out on a limb and assume the old me had a talent for that."

"Quite." No almost about his amusement now, that crooked smile was unmistakable.

"Yes, now we know what happened." Shan's voice was thin, slightly shaky, heavy with the edge of a cough. "Let's avoid doing that again."

"Right, of course, sorry." This was probably a terrible, terrible idea, but Cina couldn't help it. A smirk twitching at her lips, she said, "Hey, it could have been worse. I could have set you on fire or something."

For some reason, Shan didn't seem to think that was funny.

---

As unimpressive as Dinar Enai was, the local medical facilities were commensurately humble. According to the directory, the only thing the sleepy little town had approaching a hospital did have a fully supplied operative theatre — if she recalled correctly, every incorporated settlement in the Republic was required to have at least one — but by Core standards the place was hardly passable as a community clinic. She was pretty sure it was actually smaller than Forn's back on Taris.

Though, the waiting room, a tiny little thing with sitting room for only six people, was rather more...colourful, she guessed, than most such things she'd seen before, which, when she thought about it, wasn't too surprising. The more different people shared a space the less personality it inevitably reflected, so as to remain neutral — this clinic hosted a relatively small number of professionals, so some hints of their personal expression still had room to slip through. None of the furniture matched, a couple chairs of plain wood that was probably native right across from faded, patched upholstery that might have been brought in with the original colonists a century ago, the walls painted with vibrant, switchbacking strips of red and blue, creating a sharp contrast against the plotted plants here and there, vines crawling along frames nestled high against the ceiling, greens and browns and yellows with flowers in deep reds and purples.

The choice was peculiar, enough that Cina spent a good portion of her wait, seven minutes or so sitting in the room alone, staring at the plants all over the place, possible explanations flicking through her head. A glance back toward the reception desk, the board displaying the names and specialties of the staff, confirmed her guess: of the eight doctors working out of this clinic, six were HoʻDin. At least, the names could be HoʻDin — there was enough linguistic diversity around the galaxy it was impossible to be sure — but it would certainly explain the plants everywhere. The HoʻDin were serious about their botany, and they were from this region of space, it seemed likely. There was even a religious aspect to it, she thought, but she wasn't certain what — HoʻDin were relatively new to the wider galaxy, she didn't actually know that much...about them.

Cina frowned to herself. She didn't know that much about them. She couldn't remember the last time she'd stumbled across a species or culture she was only passingly familiar with. She didn't speak the language either, she just had a vague impression of what their names looked like. She had the weird feeling the old her had never met a HoʻDin. Which wasn't unexpected, when she thought about it — the HoʻDin were comparatively new to the galactic community, and very few had elected to leave their homeworld. They hadn't even officially joined the Republic yet, she didn't think. It wasn't so odd that she might not have ever run into one before.

The thought was still a little strange, though. She'd grown accustomed to the old her having known everything about everyone, inheriting from her languages and cultural knowledge she couldn't remember learning. It was odd, drawing a blank. Almost unsettling.

After sitting there waiting for a few minutes, the door further into the clinic swept open, a call of her name. Cina was somewhat surprised when, instead of being brought straight back to the doctor she'd arranged the appointment to see, she was given a quick physical — a list of questions on family and medical history, simple things like quick checking her height and weight, a perfunctory physical examination, even more involved things like blood labs and a test she didn't know the name of, but she assumed the point of arcing a low charge through her like that was intended to measure bodily composition, only thing that made sense. She was a bit baffled, at first.

Though it did make perfect sense, once she thought about it a moment. Physical health and mental health weren't entirely separate, after all, and, well, she wasn't even entirely certain she had legitimate medical records. The Jedi had certainly faked some, constructing her false identity, but they would be with the CHS back on Alderaan, which Cina doubted this little frontier clinic would have access to in any case. So, it wasn't unreasonable, she just went along with it.

Even if the questions she was asked were difficult to answer. She certainly did have family and personal medical history that might or might not be relevant — everybody did, after all — but she obviously couldn't remember whatever it was. She knew Cianen Hayal's, of course, but she rather doubted the Jedi had composed their fiction with reproducing an accurate medical background in mind. Some questions she could answer, whether she personally had this condition or that, allergies and the like, but many she had no bloody clue. Most of her answers ended up being variations on I don't know, which would really just have to be good enough.

After some minutes of that, she was led back out into the hall, where they nearly ran right into Peejiʻ, who'd clearly been waiting for them to finish. The psychiatrist was definitely a HoʻDin — Cina hadn't ever met one before, but they were rather...unique looking. Twig-thin and long-limbed, rough, scaly skin a peculiar greenish-yellow with a few more orangeish patches here and there — especially around the joints, his spindly hands the darkest, almost red in places — elongated, solemn face, set with gleaming pitch-black eyes, topped with a tangle of these strange...purplish...tentacle...things? (Cina had seen images before, but they somehow looked even weirder in person.) HoʻDin in general tended to be tall, this Peejiʻ especially so, bent nearly double to keep his head comfortably below the ceiling, he had to be nearly three metres high, looming over Cina and the Elomin assistant.

Though his frankly ominous appearance was dispelled the instant Peejiʻ opened his mouth. His voice was pitched rather low to match his stature, but he spoke softly and slowly, his introduction remarkably self-effacing — Cina wasn't certain she'd ever met a medical doctor who didn't draw attention to the fact that they were one, he didn't even use the title — gently taking one hand in both of his, asking what she wanted to be called, even what sort of gendered language she preferred, which was weird. Most professionals didn't bother asking humans that, since the native vocabulary of Basic was designed for human use; when she asked after it, Peejiʻ just joked that he'd rather be safe than slip up, he wouldn't want to offend someone just because he wasn't as familiar with their species as he might be.

...Now that she thought about it, Cina had absolutely no idea what the HoʻDin sex and gender system was like. None of the images she'd seen of HoʻDin had shown any obvious distinctions that could be interpreted as primary or secondary sexual characteristics...but then it wasn't always obvious, was it? (In fact, it often wasn't, humans featured a relatively high degree of sexual dimorphism compared to other sapient species.) Not to mention, she had absolutely no idea how HoʻDin reproduction worked, it was altogether possible they didn't even have multiple sexes, or might have more than two — the male-female binary humans were familiar might be frequently applicable, but it wasn't always, even things this basic varied quite a lot across the galaxy.

Eh, the receptionist had referred to Peejiʻ as he, she'd just run with that.

After a brief exchange with the tech who'd taken her physical, Peejiʻ turned to lead her off, his gliding pace surprisingly graceful. Soon they were stepping into his office — Peejiʻ himself had to awkwardly duck sideways to fit through the frame — all the decoration in the little room botanical, greens and purples and blues and yellows, the walls practically covered, only a few of the plants recogniseable. (She assumed they were imported from his homeworld, but she truly didn't know enough to tell.) Peejiʻ waved her toward a little sofa, sinking into his own chair only once she'd sat.

Leaning back in his chair, his overlong legs casually crossed at the ankle, he poked at a datapad for a moment. Probably looking through the results of that physical, the survey she'd filled out ahead of the appointment. After a minute or two, he set it aside, folding his hands in his lap and turning back to her with a thin smile. "So, Cina, what brings you to me?"

She wasn't entirely sure how she was supposed to concisely answer that question. "I believe the term is persistent depressive affective disturbance."

Peejiʻ's smile widened somewhat, revealing symmetrical rows of flat, squarish teeth. "Yes, that is the phrase you find in books. Theory may be useful in growing to understand such things, but in the clinical setting the realities of the personal experience always supercede these strict terms."

She nearly asked if he enjoyed having another academic as a patient, so he had an excuse to use language like that, but that would be completely unhelpful. "I figured the questionnaire I had to fill out would have answered that well enough."

"In limited ways, such things are helpful, but those limits must be acknowledged. That questionnaire, it tells me the what, but not the how." His smile widened again. "You are familiar enough with my field to know terms like persistent depressive affective disturbance; you must know there are good reasons we actually talk to patients."

"Yes, I know. But it would be completely pointless in my case."

"I realize it can be very uncomfortable, but if you wish to—"

"No, I mean, there's simply nothing to gain from talking about anything about my life, because none of it matters." At the blank, confused stare she was getting, Cina let out a hard sigh, eyes tipping up to the ceiling for a second. (This was an awful idea, how had Rhysam talked her into this...) "My own memories are all fake. The Jedi implanted a constructed personality in my head. Everything I remember before about, say, four months ago or so, it's all fiction, none of it happened. I suspect the...whatever, is carrying over from the old me, who I barely remember at all, so there is simply nothing to talk about."

Cina still wasn't convinced this was a good idea, she didn't really want to be here, but the absolutely dumbfounded look on Peejiʻ's face was almost worth it.

---

She ducked and spun, the heavy thrum of a lightsaber passing just over her head, bringing her own around again as she stood, smoothly coming in under Bastila's guard. She was moving fast enough, the practice blade hit Bastila in the chest hard enough it was nearly torn from her grip and Bastila let out her breath in a shocked gasp, stumbling back a couple steps. Her hand coming up to the scorch mark across the front of her robes, Bastila just stared at her for a short moment.

Once again — so faint it was barely there, the merest hint on the air, the slightest quiver in her fingers — Cina knew Bastila was fighting down that inexplicable fear she had of her. She'd gotten better at suppressing it, it wasn't nearly as obvious as it'd been on Taris and these little flashes didn't last as long as they once had. But they still happened.

(Cina still had no idea what that was about, but just coming out and asking would probably be a terrible idea.)

For a long moment, they stared at each other in peculiar tense silence, broken only with the thrums and snaps and gasps of other sparring pairs around the cavernous hall going at it. Something was going on in Bastila's head, she could tell, though not what. Cina was trying to keep herself from smiling — she very rarely straight outmatched Bastila in any of their little practice duels, and that had even been a good one, but letting show how pleased she was with herself would probably just make Bastila annoyed or something.

Cina nearly jumped when, rather closer to their circle than the other little duels going on in the room, there was a sudden, sharp sound, after a moment registering as a clap of hands, than another, slow and deliberate, almost mocking applause. She glanced that way to spot Rhysam, staring at the two of them and smirking. When had he shown up? "No reason to be sarcastic, I thought that worked pretty well."

"Well enough, I suppose." His voice was light, casual, but at once with a note of sharp humour. "If the only people you intend to be fighting are half-trained children with over-inflated ideas of their own competence."

Bastila fumed — or, in true Jedi fashion, pointedly didn't fume — and snapped something back at him, but Cina didn't really hear what it was. She was too busy biting her own lip, trying to keep any sign of her amusement from showing. Back on Taris, she'd said similar things to Bastila's face, on multiple occasions. She hadn't been very impressed with Bastila at first — still wasn't, to be honest, but she hadn't been too impressed by most of the rest of the Jedi either. Bastila was really rather ordinary, so far as Cina could tell.

Well, there was that battle meditation thing, supposedly, but Cina still didn't have a clear idea of exactly what that was supposed to be anyway.

Speaking over whatever pointless, snitty argument they were having — Bastila and Rhysam did not get along — Cina said, "You're here to put me in my place, is what you're saying."

Rhysam smirked. "Wouldn't be new, I put you in a lot of places." The suggestive tone on his voice made extremely clear what he meant by that; Bastila scowled. (That she and Rhysam were sleeping together was common knowledge throughout the Enclave by now, and everybody disapproved.) "But no, not really. I just want to see how you're coming along. Besides, sparring is fun, isn't it?"

There were worse things to do with one's time, she guessed. One shoulder lifting in a shrug, "Sure, get up here, then."

Taking Bastila's place in the circle with her, Rhysam held an open hand off to his left, toward the display of practice sabers across the room. A faint sense of power echoing in the air, one zipped over toward him, slapping into his palm — a strangely large one, longer than his forearm. An instant later, it snapped into life, one full-length beam of white light sprouting from either end. With an easy flourish, the thing spun around him, too quickly to follow, the air thrumming with the rapid passing of contained plasma, coming to a stop again tucked under his right armpit, one tip casual hovering in front of his knee. And he smiled at her.

Shite. This was going to suck, she knew it.

Before she could blink, Rhysam was darting forward, the double-ended blade spinning around him so quickly it appeared a solid cage of white light. Cina leaned hard into the Force, her own perception speeding up to meet him, but that damn thing was still moving bloody fast, flipping around on his left, his right, left right left right, she had no idea what direction the first hit was going to come from, so she just jumped out of the way, stumbling a bit in her haste.

Rhysam pivoted, twisting about to follow her with all the smoothness and easy grace of a dancer, his palm darting out to smack against his hilt in mid-flourish, redirecting the thing—

A line of fire carved across her side, the force of the blow pushing her to a knee, a yelp of mixed surprise and pain yanked out of her throat before she could stop it. She clamped a hand over the burn, bidding her body to heal itself without really thinking about it. She hadn't even seen that hit coming. Blinking in a dim sort of daze, she glanced up at Rhysam.

Smiling down at her, dark eyes dancing with amusement.

She felt her own face sink into a glare.

Lunging upward, she slashed across his knees, springing back to her feet, but he'd leaned out of the way, his pivot carrying him around to come in at her back, she barely managed to block the first hit, and that damn staff was vanishing in a dizzying whirl again, she could hardly even see what he was doing, impossible to tell an idle flourish from an actual threat until it was almost too late, the constantly shifting light nearly hiding the set of his shoulders and the shifting of his feet. She acted mostly on instinct, moving almost unconsciously, blocking three more followup hits — not as heavy as Bastila's, but so fast — skipped back from one coming at her knee even as she batted aside another coming for her shoulder an instant later, almost deafened at the riotous sparking as she blocked another and another and another, more and more, she could barely—

Her ankle flared with heat sprung from nowhere, rearing back, taken across the chest an instant later. She crashed onto her back, the breath forced from her lungs. For a few seconds, she could only lay there, her fresh burns smarting even through her amateur self-healing. That bout could hardly have lasted thirty seconds, but she was already sweating, her arms and legs unsteady, breaths shuddering.

But she hardly even noticed — she was far too distracted by shock. Somehow, she hadn't expected Rhysam to be nearly this good with a lightsaber. He always seemed so...soft? She didn't know what she meant, exactly. His light-hearted disdain for Bastila made far more sense now, though. She was all but certain he could lay out Bastila just as easily as he was her. But just light-hearted disdain because, well...

This was Rhysam they were talking about. Which was sort of the point, she simply hadn't seen this coming.

Bastila was apparently just as surprised as Cina was. "Who are you?"

She couldn't see Bastila from here, but she did catch Rhysam at the edge of her vision, shooting a brilliant smile in Bastila's direction. "Rhysam Vile, Jedi Knight. The pleasure's all mine, I assure you."

"It is simply impossible that I would not have heard of a Jedi of your skill fighting with the Republic."

"I believe you just answered your own question, Bastila dear — I haven't been fighting with the Republic. Things like Senates and admirals just complicate things, I feel. There's all kinds of work to be done on the fringes, with the added benefit of not needing to grow accustomed to the taste of hypocrisy."

Bastila started in on a very boring lecture about duty and such at that point. Personally, Cina sympathised with the sentiment of that doubtful smirk Rhysam was wearing, but saying anything would just make Bastila more annoying than necessary. And probably lead to further tedious lectures from Dorak and Tokare — she had reason to suspect Bastila regularly informed the Masters on her, it was better to keep her mouth shut.

Before that could go too long, Cina pushed herself up to sitting, glared up at Rhysam. (She was not pouting, of course not.) "How do you do that, anyway? You move too bloody fast."

He grinned. "You move faster than a human should be able to. How do you do that?"

"Well, the Force, obviously." Not that that was really an answer in itself, but not the point.

"Exactly. See, I can move faster than you because I want it more."

"...What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

His grin shifting into a smirk, Rhysam said, his voice light and bouncing, "Someone's been reading too many stories for children."

She rolled her eyes.

Then jumped up to her feet, darting in toward him again. Even as he caught the first blow, he laughed, the sound light and gleeful, his eyes sparkling with delight.

The exchange went on for a short moment — lightsabers flashing in a shifting web around the two of them, clashing together in a staccato rhythm so rapid it was almost a constant hiss — before Rhysam got one over on her again, she could see the slash coming, knew she wouldn't be able to twist around to catch it in time. Instead, throwing the power coursing hot through her veins outward, she pushed against the approaching blade. Almost to her own surprise, it froze in place, quivering impotently a foot from her chest. Not pausing a beat, she stabbed forward, expecting to get a free shot, but Rhysam's body swung backward, and up, his hands pushing to spring himself off from his pinned lightsaber, flipping over her head.

She started twisting around, but before she could hardly move, he pulled. Her grip loosened in her inattention, his lightsaber shot toward her, switching off the moment before it struck, the hilt harmlessly smacking against her chest before sliding aside, coming into his hand even as his feet hit the ground again.

"Neat trick," he said, "but locking someone down like that leaves you just as vulnerable. More vulnerable, since I want it more."

"Seriously, what the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"I'm sure you'd figure it out, if you think about it. You've just been taught not to see it."

There was something...familiar, about that...

Cina winced, a hand coming up to rub at the left side of her head before she could stop it.

"...how you do any of this, I've never heard..."

"...that complicated, when you get down to..."

"...can't all be like you, no matter how fun that..."

"...Masters have to make everything...simple answer is dangerous for the implications we..."

"...paranoid...complaining, but I don't see..."

"...trick to everything, in the end. It's not enough to let the Force...guidance. It is you, the Force doesn't really have a will of its own, and your subconscious instincts can only carry you so far.

"You have to want it, Sesai. That's why I can do what I do, and you can't. I want it more than you."

And Cina understood.

Instead of reaching for the Force, letting it come into her, instead of even pulling at it, she pushed herself into it, she dove deep under the surface, pushed herself further, the power surrounding her thick and bright and almost painfully warm, and she pushed further, and further—

And when she surfaced, she didn't leave it behind. She carried it out with her.

When she surfaced, Rhysam broke into an ecstatic grin, Bastila stared with shock (and a hint of horror Cina probably wasn't supposed to notice), the other sparring pairs stopped and turned, watching, their attention like flies buzzing around her.

She didn't walk so much as she teleported, the power she carried forcing her steps so light she barely noticed them, her practice saber meeting Rhysam's in a shower of sparks, laughter ringing in the air as he blocked a few more, the flurry easy, automatic, until with a flourish he countered, setting her aback. But though he was fast, so fast, so was she — she met each one, not with ease but not nearly so rushed as before either, she could see them coming, she could do this...

Purple.

As their blades locked for a moment, just a moment, the brilliant white of the guarded plasma inches from her face, Cina was taken out of the here and now, staring, and she knew, she didn't know how, but she knew. Some instinctive part of her, seeing the lightsaber in her own hands, expected to see a different colour.

Purple. Her lightsaber had been purple.

And blue. Her lightsabers had been purple and blue.

Cina pushed against his blade, skipped back a step, and pulled—

She turned away one hit, another, another, slapped aside a slash with her bare hand, turned the heat into an invisible punch to the gut, but he spun with the hit, another cut coming in at her off side—

Another practice lightsaber slapped against her palm, sprung to life just in time to meet the blow. Without hardly thinking, Cina spun it down and to the side, stepping forward with a lunge simultaneously, but Rhysam ducked around, coming up to cut open her back. She spun and batted it aside, the motion wide enough she would have left herself open a moment ago, but her newly-acquired second lightsaber was there to cover her, stopping a slash that should have taken her across the middle. And Rhysam pressed the attack, still flourishing and skipping and twisting in a dazzling maelstrom, but...

It was shockingly easy, to fall into the rhythm of it. It'd taken her weeks to figure out this lightsaber thing, and she'd never even tried to use two at once yet, one would think it would be inherently more complicated, one would think it'd take more effort to keep everything straight. But it was easy, countering Rhysam's elegant, swirling dance with a careful, methodical defence, using one saber as cover to give the other time to reorient toward whatever she wanted to do with it next, sometimes breaking it up just to switch the pattern, hopefully throw Rhysam off balance, she barely had to even think about, she just did it.

Somewhere in here, at a level she wasn't fully conscious of most of the time, she remembered.

And even as the pace accelerated, the two of them surrounded with an impenetrable contorting screen of white plasma, even as the fight became more than physical, the Force frothing into action around them, lightning and fire, curses to sap strength and speed, to force the other into sleep, or into fear, or into hallucination, formed by one only to be countered by the other, the air around them turned alternately cold and hot, shattering and hissing with barely contained power, even as it all became all the more intense second to second Cina cared less and less. She didn't know if she would win, she didn't know if she could, and in the moment it didn't matter the slightest bit.

The power flooding through her was intoxicating, yes, making her feel at once heavier and lighter than she once was, as though the earth should shake at her footsteps yet as though she needn't step at all, she could float away if she wanted, she could do anything, but it wasn't that, not really.

She'd known, before, it'd long been evident that the person she'd been was still here. According to Lestin, she still was the person she'd been, in most ways that mattered, she just couldn't remember any of it. She'd known that, rationally. But, as the thrum of passing sabers shook her to the bone, as the Force seared her from the inside out, painful but exhilarating, as sorcery — the twisting of the power at the centre of all the universe into shapes meant to bless or curse, contort one thing into another — as it all came pouring back as though it'd never left, she knew it, in a way that hadn't quite been made clear to her before.

They'd tried to destroy her, once. To recreate her as someone that better suited their purposes. They'd failed.

They couldn't succeed. Even if she fucked it up, even if they decided she didn't and never would meet their absurd standards, it didn't matter. There was nothing they could do to her.

Because, as her and Bastila's shared vision and their own conclusions on the matter had suggested, they needed her. If they wanted to stop Alek, they needed her. They could attempt to recreate her again, but they'd likely end up with the same result. And they hadn't the time to do it all over again, the Republic would fall in the meanwhile. No, they needed her, her as she was, they must work with her, no matter how much they distrusted her, no matter how much they disliked her.

She remembered, at least a little bit. And there was absolutely nothing they could do about it.

They had no power over her, not really. They might not have realised that yet, in fact she was certain they hadn't, but she had.

The realisation was overwhelmingly, intoxicatingly liberating.

As their play fight went on, at this point more a vicious dance than any real attempt at defeating the other, Cina's laughter rose to meet Rhysam's, their voices thick and bright with the song of the universe.

---

[the sun, significantly brighter than Zelle] — The star Zeltros orbits is called "Zel" in canon, but I changed it mostly for conlang-related reasons. Coruscant's sun would be much more luminous than Zelle, though Zeltros also orbits much closer, so the observed difference on-planet would be smaller than one might think at first, but it would still be very noticeable. Sunlight on Coruscant would have seemed much brighter and much bluer to Sesai until he adjusted.

[idealistic nihilism, neostructuralism, and material fatalism] — The first is essentially just anti-idealism, a hard rejection of the belief that human experience or concepts are a meaningful reflection of reality (basically the opposite of Kant and Plato). The second is basically just real-world post-structuralism (the term is even from an explanation of Derrida's philosophy I found on wikipedia), particularly concerning deconstruction. (Cina's use of "framing" is even similar to post-structuralist arguments I've heard before.) The last is essentially just fatalism as a consequence of hard materialism...obviously.

[HoʻDin] — Wookieepedia suggests HoʻDin really only started getting out into the wider galaxy in the last few centuries before the movies...except for a random HoʻDin appearing in one of the Lost Tribe of the Sith novellas, which was a good five thousand years earlier. (SW canon is horribly inconsistent at times.) But, well, it's worth noting that the HoʻDin homeworld is very, very close to a system labelled Ord Biniir. Like, the dots are practically on top of each other on the map. As I've mentioned before, the "ord" worlds were originally settled as military/supply bases to support Republic expansion in the Pius Dea era, seven thousand years before KotOR. I find it hard to believe that they wouldn't have found the HoʻDin in all that time.

[Peejiʻ's] — The use of the apostrophe in HoʻDin names I'm interpreting as an exotic consonant that doesn't have a neat analogue in our alphabet. (The symbol I switched in is actually stolen from the romanization for ع in Arabic.) This makes the possessive form look kinda silly but... Well, I could have used something fucking weird like h̭ or some shit, but then I'd have to explain why it's suddenly Hoh̭Din, and we'd get this note anyway. Besides, that they're supposed to stand in for some exotic consonant is the most charitable explanation I can think of for the overuse of apostrophes in fantasy/sci-fi names, honestly, what the fuck.

---

This chapter stands as proof that Sesai thinks he's funny.

Over a month since last post, I know. Work and depression are bitches. Trying to write more consistently, but, well, no guarantees.

Juhani should be...maybe the next but probably the chapter after next, which means three or four more in the Dantooine arc. Wheee? Wee.