Private A Visit to the Reef

[Jacen Nimdok]

Nimdok’s arrival at the Reef was quiet, bordering on unannounced. He had informed Kai that he intended to drop by to see him and Claudia, to check in on their “progress”. Kai had then relayed the news to Damsy, not so much to ask her permission to bring a visitor to their home, but to tell her that the professor was coming and there was no stopping him.

Sure enough, Nimdok showed up a few days later, dressed in a long coat and scarf to keep out the chill of Coruscant in autumn. He was accompanied by a dark-haired, crisply dressed young man who walked alongside the professor like a bodyguard, always ready for action.

Kai met them in the lobby, where Nimdok shook his hand, then quickly introduced his companion as Vaslav Florescu. The young man also shook Kai’s hand, beaming; despite his strictly professional manner, he had an open, friendly face. With the others yet to arrive, for a few minutes it was just the three of them—a trio of silhouettes in a shadowplay, dwarfed by the cavernous chamber.

“How have you been?” Nimdok asked Kai.

<Good,> Kai replied.

“No problems?” Nimdok paused. “Well, apart from the invasion?”

<Nope.>

“How is your training going?”

Kai shrugged, not really answering that question at all. Nimdok frowned. He didn’t mind having to prompt the kid for information, but he would’ve thought Kai would be more forthcoming, perhaps even eager to share stories of what had been going on in his life lately. Instead, he was receiving only monosyllabic answers and shrugging shoulders, all the while Kai stared at him like he was already supposed to have guessed everything. Never mind that they barely knew each other.

Before Nimdok could say anything more, he heard footsteps approaching.

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

Damsy hadn't been spending nearly as much time topside with the Jedi since the invasion.

So she was nearby when Jacen Nimdok came calling, but she wasn't sure if she wanted to meet him. Surely Kai would do just fine fending for himself just this once. When she watched the professor and his escort walk down the main avenue in the Veshok complex on one of the control room monitors, she let out a perturbed huff before going back to putting together her new trident.

But when she heard actual voices just outside of the doorless room, she stood. With a drop rag, she wiped at the worst of grease on her fingers, and ducked out of the plastic-adorned archway. "Teach'?" she asked, leaning against the scaffold railing and looking down at the unlikely trio a few feet under and away.

She had always been pretty awful at introducing herself.

 

[Jacen Nimdok]

The footsteps resolved the shadows into the shape of a woman. Nimdok looked up at Damsy as she entered his field of vision. “Hello,” he greeted her with a slight nod of his head. “You must be Miss Damsy Callat. This is Claudia’s brother Vaslav, and I’m Professor Errik Nimdok, a… friend of Kai.”

<He tried to help me once,> Kai said rather vaguely, resting his hands on his hips.

“In fact, I believe I saved your life,” Nimdok said, chuckling. “Twice, really—first when I protected you from the Jedi who were hunting you, and again when I discovered a cure for the manufactured disease which would have killed you, had I not intervened.”

<You also took me to a safehouse that wasn’t all that safe,> Kai shot back. <Then you beat me up when I was sick.>

“If you’re referring to the assassin droid, it was programmed to kill me, not you. And you attacked me first. I was only defending myself.”

<Yeah, because you were chasing me.>

Nimdok crossed his arms over his chest. “You were a delirious fugitive afflicted with a mysterious illness that caused you to vomit up blood. Of course I pursued you. What was I supposed to do, let you roam free, potentially infecting half of Coruscant—?”

The sound of Claudia’s laughter brought a sudden end to their bickering. Sitting in her hoverchair in the doorway, she held out her arms to Vaslav. Grinning, he enfolded her in a hug.

“How have you been?” she asked.

“Pretty good,” he answered, then with bashful delight added, “I’m a Jedi Knight now.”

She cheered at the news and embraced him again. Watching the happy reunion, Kai got an odd look on his face.

Nimdok meanwhile turned his attention back to Damsy. “I apologize for dropping in out of the blue. It’s just that I happened to be in the area, and thought I’d stop by. I hear your population has doubled since the invasion—I assume you’re not breeding like rabbits down here, so have you been taking in refugees?” He was genuinely interested in the plight of refugees, especially since he was one himself. His homeworld had been conquered and his species exterminated by the same butchers that had recently come to Coruscant.

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

“I apologize for dropping in out of the blue. . . .”

"No, you don't," she replied matter-of-factly. Dropping the rag at her feet, Damsy took hold on the railing with both hands and vaulted herself off the scaffold. "But it's whatever."

Refugees.

Damsy thought back on all the memories that word brought, from Korriban to open Space and beyond. Her eyes didn't know whether to smile or frown. Or perhaps they had forgotten how to.

She walked towards the professor a few steps and then stopped, threw her weight to one side, and crossed her arms over her chest. "It's not your business, but some of us are sterile. Including me. So yes." The Siren's face flashed over with its first flame of real emotion today. A Sithspawn's disgust with defiance mixed in. "Though I wouldn't really call 'em refugees. Here they fugitives."

As unofficial leader of an unofficial faction, of course Damsy considered herself to be one of her people but not quite a refugee like most of them. She had expatriated the Confederacy, breaking a false power dynamic herself, for which repercussion has never come. And she didn't fear it would. In that way, she was privileged Spawn—they more she saw, the more she realized her situation was rare. The more she travelled to liberate her unkinned kin, the more she untangled the ubiquitous web of Sith influence from their own Creations.

Her countenance softened when she glanced over at Vaslav and Claudia. "Well, up there. Down here, we're free."



**
Jacen Nimdok

 

[Jacen Nimdok]

"No, you don't,"

The ghost of a smirk curled Nimdok’s lips. She was right, of course.

He hadn’t intended to talk about Sithspawn reproduction, but his joking comment had prompted Damsy to mention she and many of her kind were sterile. “Kai isn’t,” Nimdok remarked lightly, removing his gloves one finger at a time. “Though you needn’t worry about accidental pregnancy or the like with him. His species choose the hour and the method by which they reproduce—and they essentially just clone themselves, either within their own bodies or by adapting to the body of another. Darth Prospero created Doppelgangers with the intention of becoming one himself, and in many ways they are a reflection of his… eccentric personality.”

<I don’t care about that stuff,> Kai assured Damsy.

“Well, you never know. You might start to care one day.” Stuffing his gloves into his coat pocket, Nimdok continued, “I wasn’t referring to the Sithspawn as refugees. Rather, I was wondering if you were taking in… non-Spawn, as part of the relief efforts after the invasion.”

He had nearly said normal people, but managed to stop himself. Damsy already seemed a bit testy, and while Nimdok found that he rarely got anywhere by being politically correct, aggravating her further would do him no good.

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

Damsy's gaze floated over to Kai as he made his assurance. She didn't mind either way; and she was silently likely to agree with the professor. Maybe she was a bit biased. As she got closer to the midpoint of her thirties, she had found yet another biological clock. She had been aware of her circadian rhythm her whole life, but her reproductive drive? The actual urge to have a child of her own blood—and hopefully, ideally A'Runda's too? That was a brand new development made debilitating because of what she knew about herself.

What she had first learned from the Kaminoan scientists with their white washed rooms. If she closed her eyes, it wouldn't be hard to imagine Naroh Se had come back alive as a scholarly man.

In a way, she was sort of jealous.

Could an adoptive mom be an aunt too? The Sanctorium lot was weird enough already; maybe it'd slide.

Damsy focused back on Nimdok. His question was a bit too soon, but something told her she ought talk about it anyway. "It's...complicated." A lot these days were for them. "We were, but..." She stopped again, glancing from Kai to Claudia. The memories were probably fresh on their minds too:

Arisso sending a missive to Ursula when the power went out and the entire underworld seemed to close about the Reef like a noose.

Damsy running back home after barely escaping a duel at the Temple,

convincing Arisso and the others to retreat to the factory level below,

bringing displaced Jedi and civilians into the malformed sanctuary,

and then leaving to regroup with those still fighting at the Temple.

"It was short-lived," she said, as was evident back the absence of anyone who had been sheltered here still here now. "It had to be. They would have reported us."



**
Jacen Nimdok

 

[Jacen Nimdok]

Nimdok nodded. “I had expected as much. Given the position you’re in, it would be dangerous to let strangers into your home, even for the sake of charity.”

Perhaps charity wasn’t the right word for it, but humanitarian aid was, well, too human-centric.

“Hopefully the situation here will improve, though it’ll probably get worse before it gets better.” With that, he slung his pack off of his shoulders and deftly changed the subject. “I brought a few gifts.”

Kai immediately took a step closer, peering inside the bag. Reaching inside, Nimdok retrieved a small scrap of gray cloth. “This is polyweave,” he said, holding it up. “It’s a fabric which responds to telepathy, recoloring and reshaping itself as the wearer sees fit. It’s also quite handy as an environmental suit.” Handing it to Kai, he watched as the fabric expanded, crawling up the doppelganger’s arm and shifting through a rainbow of colors before settling on a shade of blue that, quite noticeably, matched the color of his eyes.

“I have several more of these, for anyone who wants them. They’re made mainly for shapeshifters, but they’re just plain neat—and ridiculously expensive.”

Putting his arm in the bag again, he fished around a bit, then pulled out a little droid. Colored black and yellow, when he turned it on, it looked around, scanning its surroundings.

“This is BD,” Nimdok introduced the droid. “He’s for you, Kai.”

BD scampered out of Nimdok’s open hand and over to Kai, peering up at him curiously and chirping in binary. Transfixed, Kai crouched down and put his hands on its head, almost as if to pet it.

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

“I had expected as much. Given the position you’re in, it would be dangerous to let strangers into your home, even for the sake of charity.”

Damsy bit down an irate 'then why'd ya ask?' She was beginning to understand why Kai had not yet called Nimdok a friend. What a strange man.

The polyweave came out in the next moment. She canted her head, watching it morph to an enthusiastic Kai. Part of her immediately wanted to claim one of the extras, or at least try it on, but another part of her, not so much. She hadn't shifted in a series of months than felt much more like a couple of lifetimes in the regard. Maybe it was a false association, but she assumed Syreni was closely tied to the Siren.

Or, again, perhaps that wasn't the case and she just hated the two sides of her equally but separately.

Curiosity won out though. She rose her ocean eyes to the professor. "Neat. It's prolly 'bout time I made myself another suit." Her last two shifting armors had been constructed by the Confederacy. She knew where they both were—one in her private quarters on Kamino and the other in Castle Black—provided the scientists and Mandalorians had seen fit to keep them there. Maybe, maybe not. Either was just as well; she wouldn't go back for the skins of her past.

After accepting a piece of cloth, she remained near its gifter. "Uh," she began. "While you're here, I have a question. A Jedi question. If you could answer it later, I'd be much obliged."

Yes.

She really would.



**
Jacen Nimdok

 

[Jacen Nimdok]

“Of course.”

He handed out one more gift, a small box containing a green Atargatis Skin, which Vaslav passed along to Claudia. Then he rose to his feet, turning to Damsy, an expectant look on his face.

“You wanted to ask me a Jedi question?”

The others seemed preoccupied, like children playing with their presents on Life Day morning. If secrecy was required for this conversation, they could slip away unnoticed.

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

Damsy nodded as she stepped aside and gestured up to the control room. She would follow behind Nimdok if he would lead the way. Once she had bat the plastic strips away from her head and ducked inside, she then indicated to a rolling chair behind the one desk in the space. It was clear she had been working from there not five minutes before, with a half-put-together trident taking up the better portion of tabletop. Dissected pieces, and one prong, were strewn about the segmented shaft. "'Cuse the mess, teach," Damsy said. "If you don't mind it, you can have a seat."

Her seat.

She settled herself up against a stretch of wall bare of a control panel.

"Have you experienced Ashla?"



**
Jacen Nimdok

 

[Jacen Nimdok]

So there was some level of secrecy involved. What did she want to talk to him about? Tantalized by the possibilities, Nimdok followed Damsy into the control room, accepting her offer to sit down.

When she posed her question, however, his eyebrows rose in confusion. Then his expression shifted into the sort of bemused look one would give a door-to-door religious missionary.

“I don’t view the Light Side of the Force as a goddess to be worshiped, if that’s what you mean. But I am Force sensitive, and I was a Jedi Master, so I suppose that counts as ‘experience’. Why do you ask?”

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

Damsy shook her head. To indicate that wasn't exactly what she had meant. To dispel any sense of irritation creeping over her at his face, She had to press on. She had to have, finally, an answer.

"Sure, but how do you experience he—it?" she inflected. "I'm not tryin' to convert you." She put a fist over her heart, promising by silent Mando'a word, though it seemed that of a dar'manda meant little to most these days. "I'm tryin' to convert myself. I-I mean, I believe, I think, but...I dunno, nothin' makes sense the more I try to. The Light Side, Ashla, whatever."

She straightened up, sighing, and walked towards the table. There she stood folding her new polyweave on an empty corner. She didn't look at Nimdok now. Part of her, quite possibly Syreni, wanted to tell him to forget about it and turn away from help at the first prospect of provocation. But, again, she reminded herself how much relied on her being willing and able to soldier on. And that she might as well start as close to beginning as possible.

Context was good.

"How much has Kai told you about me? Anything?"



**
Jacen Nimdok

 

[Jacen Nimdok]

Nimdok remained silent as she explained what she really meant. When she turned away from him, he leaned forward and folded his hands in his lap.

“I know that you are a Sithspawn, and that you’re made from modified Shi’ido DNA.” The Sith had a weird obsession with shapeshifters; Nimdok suspected it was because they were considered creepy, deceptive, and hard to kill. Typical human mindset. “I also know that you have received some training from the NJO. I don’t know what exactly they’ve been teaching you there, but I hope they haven’t given you the impression that the Force itself is split in half between Dark and Light.

“That’s part of the reason why I dislike the terms Ashla and Bogan—because they are rooted in a misconception that Light and Dark are entities unto themselves.” He shook his head. “Light and Dark is just how you choose to use the Force, for good or evil. Corruption or purity—these things come from within.”

Standing up, he approached her side, peering down at her work on the trident. “As for why you’re having trouble, it sounds like you may be viewing the Light as something that you have to bargain with in order to be ‘saved’, when the reality is, you simply have to do the right thing.”

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

“I know that you are a Sithspawn, and that you’re made from modified Shi’ido DNA.”

Okay.

Alright.

So there was a reasonable foundation here between them of their understanding of one another. That being said, Damsy's was a little shaky of him, but it would do for now.

"Modified's a way you could say it fo' sure," Damsy mused, still looking down. "Alchemized, spliced, maybe more like it. I wasn't nothing before Spawn. Not even two gametes. Just strings of DNA in a test tube. And then...well, y'see what now."

“. . . I hope they haven’t given you the impression that the Force itself is split in half between Dark and Light.“

She wanted to move away when he neared, raise her hands in learned surrender, to prove she wasn't a threat and apologize for disappointing. But why? It wasn't her fault. She blinked against her own realization. The Jedi, at least this Coruscanti breed, were the ones who had taught her what Nimdok feared; she hadn't come to the conclusion of a misleading dichotomy herself.

Damsy finally forced herself to glance up and attempted to meet his eyes. "So," she began in a voice full of quiet wonder, "this lack of compassion I feel...it's not from the Force but the Order?"



**
Jacen Nimdok

 

[Jacen Nimdok]

So she had known nothing else other than being a Sithspawn. He supposed that did complicate things. It also probably guaranteed that there were people who believed she was unredeemable and ought to be exterminated.

Sensing her looking in his direction, he caught her gaze. His eyes were kind.

“The NJO has its problems, certainly. These are the same Jedi who bombed a Sith Academy full of very young students, slaughtered captured Acolytes in cold blood, and still seek to completely eradicate anything even remotely associated with the Sith. The majority of their members were thrown into battle from a young and impressionable age, without the guidance of masters, learning from experiences too bleak for any of them to emerge with a healthy mindset. If you feel a lack of compassion from them, Miss Callat, it’s because they’ve forgotten what compassion feels like, or they never knew it to begin with.”

Despite the harshness of his words, his tone was more pitying than condemning. Many times he had considered joining the NJO as a master, to work as a teacher. But something had always stood in the way, be it other responsibilities that needed his attention more, or a fear that his attempts at mentoring the New Jedi would be squandered… or that no matter what he did, it wouldn’t be enough.

“But what I’ve told you about the Force is just one school of thought. The Force is…” He waved his hand vaguely, one eyebrow raised. “Unknowable. If anyone claims to know what exactly it is, they’re probably trying to sell you something. I just happen to think it’s the best school of thought, the one that makes the most sense… and probably the most compassionate one.”

He paused thoughtfully before continuing, “The line between good and evil cuts through everyone. There will always be temptation, anger, fear, loss of control. The state in which Sithspawn exist seems to be more complicated, and I admit I don’t fully understand it. But I refuse to believe you’re ‘damned’ due to the circumstances of your birth.”

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

He admitted he didn't understand it.

Damsy returned his kind gaze with a half-hearted smile. "Me neither. Before all this, I was just Damsy." She gestured generally all around. "Now I dunno if after I'll make it full circle." Despite the insinuation, her smile gained a degree of two of warmth. "What you asked before, about refugees, I'll tell ya what. Find me some open-minded as you an' tell 'em they have a place in the depths of Coruscant to stay."



**
Jacen Nimdok

 

[Jacen Nimdok]

Nimdok nodded. “I will certainly keep that in mind.”

After a few moments, he seemed to remember that he did know some refugees who might be welcoming. “Fleshtakers,” he said. “Well, former Fleshtakers, I should say. They are Shi’ido who were ‘broken’ by the Maw, then sent among the rebels and the refugees fleeing Lao-mon to serve as double agents. We’ve caught a few, and they’ve been healed to the best of our ability, but there are many who still don’t trust them.

“I imagine they’d be grateful for a place to stay, and would find something in common with many of your residents here, if you would have them.”

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

Her nod was immediate.

"Fo' sure," she replied, picking a piece of filmsiplast and a pen out of her mess stretched across the table, and writing down a series of numbers. She then offered them out to Nimdok. Coordinates. "Give 'em my number. They'll be safe 'ere. Just, uh, maybe tell the Jedi they went somewhere offworld or somethin'? They already have too much reason to come poking around; would hate to give 'em more."



**
Jacen Nimdok