Standalone thread : Komari Vosa, or how accidentally bullshitting one's way through Jedi Knighthood trials
"Your trials will take place next month" says her master, not once looking in her direction. She does not allow expression to surface on her face as hidden in her guts butterflies flap in hope and crushing betrayal. She squashes the first, viciously. It hurt less, that way. She had thought… But she knows. She is not ready. She is. She is not, for all her skill with a lightsaber, for all her knowledge and spotless record, for all the aches and the sleepless nights, it is not enough. She is not a Jedi, Master Dooku frown inform her often enough. When she looked up from the sparring partner she disarmed and he criticized her lack of empathy. When she reflected right back the blaster fire aimed at her master head and he criticized her lack of planning, because it could have been useful to interrogate him, padawan. When she took offence that stupid ruler dared insult her master to his face, when her master had to keep his cool to not throw the negotiation and she did not manage to scold the rage out of her face. He laughed – that stupid leader laughed, like she was nothing – and she wanted to rip his limbs apart one by one… She did not, she is a Jedi Padawan, but restrain is not enough. Restrain should come naturally, not be wrenched into shape. Restrain shouldn't have to be reminded by one's master. So Komari knows she is not ready.
It's early too. Not for her skills, because she matches most of the newly knighted, but twenty-one is considered young for a knighting. Not mature enough. She is, she took care of him when everything was tumbling down.
"I will honor you, master" she assures, snapping back to the reality of their morning breakfast. His eyes briefly meet hers and her heart quickens at the acknowledgement, before they swept to the window and Coruscant traffic shrouded in sunrise. A bitter taste crawls in her mouth. She doesn't show it. She won't burden him with more, not when she already fails so often.
She trains her body in preparation for the trials, Djem So kata adapted to Jar'Kai, movement graceful and deadly and furious, each sweep and thrust echoing with the elegant instruction of a perfect kata, Pim laughter, Rael rough humor, Xanathos jesting dares. Ghosts, even those that are still alive. She should meditate instead, to find peace. To finally settle that she won't end like Xanathos – whatever Xanathos ended as that was so dreadful Qui-Gon who was so proud of him now go livid at the mere mention of him. Qui-Gon's gone too, another ghost, wrathful and shouting horrible things, his presence in the Force rolling in grief and loss and anger. She wasn't meant to hear them, she should have kept working her essay on Ryloth interplanetary relations, but he was so loud, shouting master Dooku into silence, that the door wasn't enough.
Dead, as good as dead, he said of Xanathos. Better dead, even, he added as she clasped her arms around her knees, her palms on her ears to not hear him damn Xanathos. Xanathos who was a bit mean, sure, in beating her down constantly at Ataru, but it was a challenge, from spar to spar, form to form and while he huffed when he lost, it was to have lost at a padawan three years his junior. Xani who was just eighteen and would mock her when she lost but correct her grip so she could get better. Wide grins and sharp teeth, and snark thrown back and forth but never hurtful, always companionable. Xani – no, Xanathos, Xani was dead and gone, and had never been here, never been her model, because she wasn't like him, being cast off by her master. Her master was still here, even when Qui-Gon renounced them and stormed off to Jeddha, without a care for any of them.
Except he was not, was he? He wasn't here when Pim was gone. Little Pim, two head shorter than Komari for all she was only ten months younger and had actually become Rael padawan seven months before Komari became Master Dooku padawan. Gentle and laughing Pim who could get everybody to make friend just by being nice back when they were in the Creche. Pim dead at fourteen. Had she reached a little too far, upset by Qui-Gon words? The thoughts lurked and festered in the back of her mind. She did not want to think about anything connected to Qui-Gon.
They brought the body this time, her face ghastly, the blue leeched from her skin and no smile on her perpetually curved lips. It took them two weeks more to bring Rael back, in which Master Dooku was busy making a nuisance of himself to be sure the Judicial did not stick anything on Rael for avenging Pim. She was alright, Pim was with the Force, probably suggesting finger-painting contests in the Creche, or dancing in the garden, or cheering up whichever lonely master she latched on this time. She wasn't the stilled, falsely immobile expression of her void corpse. They were Jedi, they were one with the Force, the generation before enlacing the Temple in a balm of serenity. Pim was here, just not here.
Rael would join her soon. He used to laugh. Tell a bawdy joke, be elbowed by a falsely stiff Qui-Gon, glared by Master Dooku, ruefully excuse himself then Qui-Gon would egg him on, her two significantly older padawan brothers ganging on their shared master, Xani would look aggravated, Pim would hide her mouth but not her bubbly amusement and shiny eyes and Komari would wait a bit before throwing a challenge at Xanathos, because the adults weren't going to stop bickering soon. Rael didn't look the type to joke, now. She didn't see him come dripping in blood, but she heard he did. She saw enough the following months. The gaunt face, the morbid thoughts, the time Master Dooku broke through his door in a sea of pills and told her to call Healer Che now, the stillness hours at a time that wasn't mediation, the vanishings where Master Dooku spent his days tracking him in the underworld. She didn't see much, in truth. Seeing Rael reminded her of Pim – who wasn't, wasn't gone, just not here – and seeing her reminded him of Pim – he'd cry and though they both cried in a tangle of limbs and swot once, he would tell her she was gone, and she isn't. Not Pim. She hadn't the right to be gone, not when Komari had not been able to protect her like she used to do in the Creche before Pim inevitably made friend with the bully Komari would have sooner hit for looking at Pim funny.
So she got to class, then to the Archives, then to whatever elective she could add on her schedule. Master Dooku was rarely in their quarters anyway. More often than not he was at Rael's, cleaning of all things and making sure he ate. Why did he bother? Rael wanted to be gone, he would find a way to leave too, like Pim, like Xani, like Qui-Gon, like even Feemor who vanished… Sometime he was at Master Yoda who kept inviting him, or they were both invited at Yoda's who kept asking question her master didn't want to answer, so when he turned to Komari, she made sure everything was good. She didn't want to add more on Master Dooku. She scored the highest of her age-mate in any class, Master Dralling praised her understanding of the forms, she cooked in case he would come stumbling in tired from having kept Rael of his objective another day. Sometimes, he notices her when she does.
Qui-Gon comes back from Jeddha. He is still not speaking to them. Komari doesn't seek him out. She tried looking for Feemor, but he was out of the Temple. It would have been nice to maybe speak about it with him. They didn't often speak before – before Xanathos, before Qui-Gon, before Pim – but maybe they could have. But that's stupid and useless and as dumb as speaking to Master Yoda. Master Yoda could tell Master Dooku she isn't perfect, and worthy of his attention…
Rael gets better. At least, Master Dooku can manage him less closely. He looks at her. He frowns. Komari doesn't understand, she did everything right, everything. Sure, she was a bit too violent with that bounty hunter but he was trying to kill him, and maybe she was a bit rude to that diplomate but he was purporting rumors that shouldn't stain her master, and she can sleep on the ship master, she'll finish parsing through the mission package first, so she'll do better…
He doesn't want her to come with him to the next mission. It hurts, but it's just a fluke, she'll show him, she will be perfect, and he will look at her and will not leave again. Just a bit or warmth in his voice. She shows up at the landing port with a commendation for her investment with the Younglings – they remind her of Pim, which is heart wrenching but good, as long as she keep her shields tight. She knows how to do that, she does so for years now. He looks at her. It is not a frown. It is not a well done either, because when the words come they are hesitant. But it is something – anything is good to take. He asks her about her time when he was gone, he looks at her strangely when she repeats the commendations on good behavior, saber forms, essays. When she dares to asks how his mediation has gone, steeling herself for a "better than with you here" – not that he ever told anything remotely like that, but he did not bring her, and she finished the works he assigned well before he came back – he tells her about meeting a freighter captain in pensive tone. It is only after, when he goes on Serenno without her, that she learns about the padawan. It stings but less than expected. Master Koon, whose guidance she was entrusted to for the duration of her Master visit of his home world, is kind. Master Dooku had grown less stiff, too. Not like he was Before, but less distant. Until he told her for the trials. So he won't leave, but he will make her leave. Still, she will make him proud, so no one may doubt his tutelage like Qui-Gon once did.
She soars through the trials, past the line between reality and illusion. She chokes on the Force brutally wrenched from her by the collar of her neck. She's kneeling in a nightmare, her hands on the chain around her throat, the filthy slaver cracking his whips a few feet behind her. It is not the nightmare. The nightmare is before her. Her eyes swept past the frightened civilian suspended over the sarlacc mouth screaming for help – they are not important, not when her master is fighting off a faceless warrior. The whips come down on her back. The civilians fall in the sarlacc mouth with scream of terror and deglutition. The second faceless enemy bisect Master Dooku, unable to disengage from the lock-up with the first. A blink and the situation is the same: the slaver, the sarlacc, the faceless. A vision. A warning to save her master. She rolls to her feet, the whip lashing on her side. She could kill him: grab the whip, pull, catch the keys on his belt, disconnect the collar, but he would struggle and while she is sure she would inevitably win, it would be too late to save Master Dooku. His death wouldn't bring her master back. She springs on her feet, coils her body to run – she doesn't have a weapon, but it doesn't matter. If she tackles the second faceless, Master Dooku will have the time to slay the first and he'll turn to find her corpse, but it doesn't matter because he will be alive.
A flash of blue catches her eyes. Not saber blue. Pantoran blue. She spies the girl in the cage, tears crawling down her checks. It's Pim. Pim in a cage to be dropped in a sarlacc mouth. She doesn't have her padawan braid, but if she got caught undercover she wouldn't. Her feet fly. She tackles the cage, use her momentum to send it careening over the ridge, on solid ground. It breaks on impact, freeing them. Komari doesn't make it, she gave all her momentum to the cage. She falls in the sarlacc mouth. Master Dooku die. Pim lives, and will keep living. Pim is no fool, she'll run, she'll protect the civilians. That's how she died, after all.
She blinks, surprised to find herself kneeling in the circle of masters. The trials. A simulation for the trial of Spirit. The trial she knew she would fail, the one she always fail on missions. Except she didn't fail.