Private The Talk

[Kahlil Noble]

"So, let's get started."

Kahlil closed the door to the bedroom, glancing towards where Valery was standing. His expression was calm, yet clearly tense. It was a conversation they needed to have, but it wasn't entirely something he was excited to do. He moved over, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. Closed his eyes for a brief moment.

"We don't agree fully on how to handle Marigold."

Valery Noble

 

[Valery Noble]

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"You're overprotective."

Valery blinked at how blunt she was, and opened her mouth as if she was going to correct herself or bring more nuance to it, but then stopped and sighed. While Kahlil sat down at the edge of the bed, she remained standing and looked him in the eyes. She was never good at confronting him or others close to her, but this was a talk they needed to have. It was healthy for their relationship, and ultimately necessary for Marigold as well.

They couldn't allow their arguments to cause trouble for her path forward.

"I understand that you have experience with this type of redemption, but I don't agree that she should be shielded too much. You do this with all your Padawans, but it can bite them in the ass later when they don't have your protection to rely on anymore."

 

[Kahlil Noble]

Kahlil similarly blinked at how blunt she was. She was honest, at least. And it wasn't like he disagreed fully. She was, naturally, right that it was important to let the Jedi of the Order to learn how to stand on their own. "I.. Agree. I want to protect the Jedi of this order. We've lost so many in the last war. Children. I know I'm too protective, but I want them not to die. But," Since they were being blunt about what they thought of the other,

"You're too black and white. This galaxy has many places where what's right and wrong to you just don't exist for the people that live there. Her actions are wrong, but where she came from, what started it all, it was likely the only choice she had. You let her continue to get under your skin and aggravate you. Why? You're a Jedi Master. It alarms me when you treat things so simply and let your emotions take hold."

Valery Noble

 

[Valery Noble]

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Valery seemed a little relieved that he didn't disagree with what she said. A lot of people were quick to get defensive, but they knew each other way too long and were far too close to deny observations about each other. Which prompted his response about her own views on the matter, and for the first time, she really felt a tightness rising in her chest. A need to defend herself, a bit of hurt, but similarly to her husband, she couldn't really deny it all.

The life of a Shadow, the path of a Jedi of the Old Republic — it was often very black and white.

"She annoys me because she doesn't take what she did seriously at all. How can she possibly talk about becoming a Jedi and yet seem so... lazy?" She sighed frustratedly and kept her gaze locked with his. "But it's not why I have my approach. I wanted to show her how futile her killing spree has been, so she understands that it's not the way. I wasn't going to show her bodies or the innocent people she maimed."

"But how will she understand that she was wrong if you just shelter her like you always do? It's not going to keep her or other Padawans alive when the Mandalorians force them into war. It's going to make them defenseless."

 

[Kahlil Noble]

"That's because you don't understand what it's like. It's easy for you to point to the wrongs someone commit because the only wrongs you've ever seen were made by choice. You could see it in her face when we brought it up that she knows what she did wrong. That she understands just how terrible it was. But she wasn't ready to face that. To face her choices that she made because she had to to survive. Would you bring Cora back to Ukatis? Show her where Horace hit the ground?"

It might seem like a stretch, or even an unfair and cruel comparison. But it wasn't. It was the same. For Marigold and him both.

"She is still a child, Val. A child who had to do horrible things to survive and could only cope with that by continuing to justify it to herself. She will go back to those places. But that has to be her choice, when we think she's ready. Otherwise you risk her falling right back into the justifications she needed to survive."

Valery Noble

 

[Valery Noble]

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"Really? I'm not that convinced she knows how wrong it was just yet. Not with how her attitude has been towards it all." Valery was already frowning but when he made the comparison to Cora, there was a flash of anger in her eyes. "Really? You're now comparing Marigold's situation to Cora? Cora was in complete self-defense against someone who wanted to directly harm her. Marigold was traveling from one place to another, searching for her next target, uncaring about the collateral damage."

"They are not the same thing," she said with a raised voice that caught her by surprise and had her go quiet for a moment. She couldn't let emotion get the better of her, but she was protective of her Padawans too.

"I do agree that she should go back when we think she's ready, but I worry that you'll wait too long. That you're going to shield her so much that when she's confronted by those terrible things again, she has learned nothing to prepare her for it and needs you to get through it. We shouldn't throw our Padawans into battle, but we shouldn't shelter them either."

"They have to be able to navigate through life themselves by the time we're knighting them."

 

[Kahlil Noble]

"Where do you think that sort of mindset comes from? Where a bomb is the only answer for slavers and drug dealers? She was a slave, Val. A clearly abused and broken slave. You tell me that if there hadn't been a window, that if Cora hadn't had that blasted ring on, she wouldn't have done something worse than just pushing Horace out that window? If that ring wasn't there, she could've very well killed all of the people in that castle before she realized it."

His voice raised in turn, but he closed his eyes and pinched his brow. Willed himself to calm. "Marigold only had one choice given to her. To fight, and the only way she knew how was with her bombs. You need to understand what it's like when you truly don't feel like there's another option. Cora at least had you to help her know a different path. Marigold has had no one all this time. She's a child who only knows this path. She's not lazy, she's coping. Hiding."

He let out a heavy sigh at that, slumped back against the bed with his eyes still closed.

"They do. I know they do. But she never had the chance to be a kid. She's already been through so much, so much more than she's even told us. I don't want to over protect her, but at the same time she needs someone to protect her for once."

Valery Noble

 

[Valery Noble]

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"You're running off of assumptions now. She could have but Cora didn't do any of it, and you can't just claim that she would have. But Marigold did kill a lot of people to accomplish what she thought was right and maimed even more." Valery held back more of her frustration but clearly didn't like the comparison with her Padawan at all. Cora, while forced into an immensely difficult situation, was nothing like Marigold.

Valery refused to believe she would have done the same.

But Kahlil then continued, and emotion finally slipped into her voice and eyes. Not anger or frustration, but hurt, "I need to understand what that's like? I was captured by slavers too, remember? You've seen what happened to me. You know how much it haunted me until you helped me confront that past. Being sheltered and hiding from it for all my life made me frightened at even just the sound of a whip." She felt her lips trembling and rubbed a tear from her eye, so he couldn't see it fall down her cheek.

But he knew, he always did.

"I don't want her to hide from this, love. It's just going to delay the pain and make it worse. What if we're not there anymore when she does confront it? What if she doesn't have anybody else? Now is the time that we can guide her through, and it doesn't have to be tomorrow. But... please, we can't let her make my mistake and wait too long."

 

[Kahlil Noble]

"You were saved, Val. Imagine your life, all your life, was that fear until you had to either die or save yourself." He frowned. Sat up to look up towards Valery with his own pained expression. "Imagine it being the only life you knew. Yes, I want to shield her. Not forever, but she deserves to be saved and safe even if it's just for a little while. I trust you, more than anyone I trust you to tell me when it's time. But please just give her a chance to learn what peace really is before she has to face what she's running from."

Valery Noble

 

[Valery Noble]

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Valery frowned deeper now, "I was saved after I snapped and killed almost every slaver there. I did save myself before my rescue, and Marigold is only getting out of her situation because of our help too. Her situation is a lot more similar to mine than you make it seem." She shifted awkwardly on her feet and rubbed the side of her left arm. This whole topic of slavery was uncomfortable but it had been Marigold's life, and Valery could relate just a tiny bit to it.

She had just gotten out of it faster because she was already a Jedi when it happened to her. Master Dawn had helped her, but he had also shielded her. That is what created a fear that only recently got addressed.

"I...alright." she sighed and stepped closer to search for some connection from her husband. Something to help her calm down. "I will give her time but promise me that you're not knighting her until it's addressed. It'd hurt so much to see her go through the same thing, and it will destroy her more than it did me."

 

[Kahlil Noble]

"I've never had any intention of knighting her before she faced that part of herself. That'd just be irresponsible." That's not at all what his intention was. He reached up to take her hand, squeezed it gently.

"There certainly shouldn't be a rush to make her a Knight either. She needs time. I know there's a war, but she needs time regardless."

Valery Noble

 

[Valery Noble]

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Valery nodded slowly when he took her hand and squeezed it, "She needs time, and the right exposure to what we deal with as Jedi. I... might be too quick with it all sometimes, and I feel you're too protective. But together we make for a good balance, right? Especially for someone like Marigold, who needs a bit of extra guidance." Most Padawans didn't exactly start of with civilian casualties on their name, after all.

Or an attitude like hers.

A deep sigh followed before she slowly climbed her way up into his lap while he sat on the edge of the bed. She positioned a leg on each side of his, and held her arms around his neck to look him in the eyes.

"It also sparked a question and I want your honest opinion." She paused and made sure he understood that she wanted to know how he really felt about it. "Do you feel I've thrown my Padawans into danger too much or too quickly? My first group became Padawans in the middle of a war and it left them as scarred as most other Jedi. But... was there anything I should have done differently?"

"If so, I want to hear it from you, and from you alone."

 

[Kahlil Noble]

"We all have."

That was the blunt and honest truth he had.

"I don't know if there's anything different we could've done. I don't know what other choices there really were. But the Padawans in that war didn't just end up scarred. They died. Calix died. He was just a boy, barely even a teen, but he joined Exegol and he died there. Whatever we've been doing, I can't help but think we've been doing it wrong." Kahlil met her gaze, but it was filled with more confusion than anything. The Jedi were supposed to be different from the Sith and how he grew up.

It frustrated him to no end to still be burying children.

Valery Noble

 

[Valery Noble]

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Valery looked him in the eyes and frowned at the confusion and hurt that lingered behind them. What happened to Calix and all the Padawans during the war with the Maw was something that had always bothered him. This wasn't the first time she had seen it, but this was the first time they talked at such length about it. That idea made her frown — why hadn't they opened up and talked about it more?

As his wife, she should have been more supportive.

Gently, Valery brought her hands up to his cheeks and gently stroked through his beard with her thumbs, "It's a complex problem. We shouldn't throw young Padawans straight into a battlefield, but we should at the same time prepare them for it. We've seen what the Sith are capable of — they can attack us and force us into a fight, and if the Padawans aren't ready, they will die as well." She sighed and continued caressing his cheeks.

"I just worry I've been too hard on mine. I think I'm doing better with my current Padawans, but... yeah." She paused and looked him in the eyes.

"Do you think your Padawans will be ready if conflict is forced on them? If they don't have a choice."

 

[Kahlil Noble]

"I don't know."

That was probably the most terrifying part. Kahlil let out a heavy sigh, leaning forward to just hide his face in Valery's neck. Hug her close.

"I don't what I'm doing anymore. I don't want to send them into war, but preparing them seems to be the only good option. I don't like it at all."

Valery Noble

 

[Valery Noble]

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"I know," Valery said, her voice much softer now that the heat of their argument was starting to fade. She let him rest his head on her shoulder, kept his face buried into her neck, and brought a hand up against the back of his head to gently. Valery held him close and tight in their embrace like that, and moved her fingers through his hair.

"You're doing a fantastic job as a Master, love. I think you're too protective sometimes, but it's far better than throwing them into the war young. It's... how I was raised, and it was terrible." She planted a gentle kiss against his cheek and pulled back for a moment to meet his gaze. "We should keep working on it together. We'll make mistakes and it's impossible for our judgement to always be 100% correct with our Padawans. But that's life, right? In the end, we can prepare them and keep them as safe as we should, I just know it."

She pulled him back into another tight hug and drew in a deep breath.

"...I'm sorry for raising my voice at you earlier."

 

[Kahlil Noble]

"That was you raising your voice?"

Kahlil leaned against her, held her. Let his eyes close as he listened to her words. She was right, he knew that much. Both their childhoods had ruined them in ways they couldn't ever fix. But where she had accepted it, he was still tirelessly rebelling against it to keep his Padawans, his family, safe. He knew it would bring about his downfall. He smiled, just a little, as he met her gaze. "We'll figure something out. I know. I just fear what that means for the Jedi."

Valery Noble

 

[Valery Noble]

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"That was you raising your voice?"

Valery pushed out her lower lip into a gentle pout and looked a bit flustered. She didn't want to seem like a pushover, especially not to her husband and children. But then again, he never made her feel like one, and rarely tried to overrule the things she said either to him or their kids. So when he pulled her back into a hug, she already felt better and moved her hand back to the back of his head.

"As hard as it was, a lot of us did get through the last war. Now we have grown as leaders and Jedi, so we can hopefully avoid those mistakes. I just think we should be careful not to become a different extreme." Too eager to throw bodies into battle, especially Padawans, was a mistake. But so was being overprotective to where they became helpless.

"We'll keep each other balanced. If you feel I go too far, I want you to tell me. But if I think it's Important for you to take a step back, I will also tell you. Doesn't mean you have to listen every time, but the conversation would be good to have." Valery leaned in again and pressed a gentle kiss against his cheek once more, then placed one into his neck.

"Next time I raise my voice, I'll be louder." She teased with a whisper into his ear.

 

[Kahlil Noble]

"We should always be honest with each other."

There was never a reason to lie. Kahlil agreed with that much. He smiled, leaned down just a little to kiss her forehead. It was good for them to talk like this. Open and honest. Though he did blink in surprise at what she said next. And then laughed. He couldn't help himself, not with her whispering in his eat like that.

"Oh I'm sure you will, love. Perhaps even now."

Valery Noble

 

[Valery Noble]

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"I'd like to think that we are. We're... quite literally in each other's heads, you know," she smirked and closed her eyes to lean into the kiss against her forehead. The affection felt nice after a more heated discussion, but she wanted a lot more, and the way he decided to read into her whisper...

She knew he wanted it too.

"Even now?" She was quick to pull him into another kiss, but this time on the lips. It started slow and gentle, but after she pulled back and drew in a sharp breath, she realized it just wasn't enough. Not after all that tension that built up between them. Valery pressed forward again and brought herself into a deeper, more passionate kiss, while she pushed him onto his back on the bed. She knew it wouldn't last being on top of him like this, but she wanted to stare down into his eyes for just a second.

"You're kind of cute like this," she said softly while her hand brushed against his cheek. "Maybe we should argue more often, hm?"