Private An Unexpected Reprieve (Lumiya)

[Vendryn Del'therak]

Vendryn watched her retreating form for a long moment, the faint trace of amusement in her voice lingering in the stale, dust-choked air like an echo that refused to fade. Developing a personality. The words struck him oddly - he was offended, even. His four sapphire eyes narrowed slightly, the upper pair fixing on her back with a lidded, calculating gaze while the lower tracked the sway of her steps. He opened his mouth to retort, but the words came out as little more than a frustrated mumble, low and rasping from the lingering strain in his chest. "I have plenty of personality." It was half-hearted at best, delivered with the slow, deliberate enunciation that marked his speech even in better health. The admission felt petty, beneath him, yet it escaped before he could school it back into cold formality.


He pushed himself upright with deliberate care, his upper hands bracing against the twisted bulkhead while the lower pair steadied his balance. The wound in his chest throbbed with every heartbeat, a deep, hollow ache that reminded him how fragile his reprieve truly was, but the bleeding had slowed to a sluggish seep beneath the synthweave and sealant. Lumiya's work had held. For now. He followed after her, his tall frame forcing him to duck beneath the same sagging support beams that had claimed her attention moments before. The corridor beyond the bridge was narrow, almost intimate in the way wreckage often became—cozy, if one ignored the scent of scorched circuitry and old blood. Dim emergency strips flickered overhead in irregular pulses, casting long shadows that danced across fractured plating and scattered debris. Several doorways branched off at irregular intervals: what looked like a small crew quarters to the left, a maintenance alcove partially collapsed on the right, and further ahead, a hatch that might once have led to storage or officer's cabins. The ship had been a courier, sleek and efficient in its prime, but now it felt like a forgotten tomb turned makeshift shelter. Dust motes swirled in the stale air with each careful step, and faint groans of stressed metal echoed distantly as the desert wind pressed against the outer hull.


"An older wreck might indeed be safer," he conceded after a beat, his voice carrying down the confined space with measured thoughtfulness. "But those are picked clean by now. Scavengers and opportunists descend like mynocks on anything that has sat long enough to cool. No... it is in these fresh kills that one finds value. Intact systems. Rare components. Technology that has not yet been stripped or corrupted by time and exposure." His upper left hand gestured fluidly as he spoke, a habitual emphasis that accompanied his words even in this weakened state, while the lower pair remained closer to his body, tucked near the waist of his bloodstained robes. Practicality over sentiment; that was the way of things. Dead ships yielded nothing if left too long.


A sudden phantom pang lanced through his skull—not quite pain, but a disorienting pressure that made him wince and reach up instinctively with one of his upper hands. He glanced sharply overhead, scanning the low ceiling and dangling beams for whatever obstacle he must have struck. Nothing. Just open, shadowed space above him. His brow furrowed in confusion, the secondary eyes narrowing as he probed the sensation with a thread of the Force. Recovery, he decided after a moment, chalking it up to the lingering aftereffects of blood loss and the brutal healing his body had undergone. Concussion, perhaps, or some echo of the crash. He shook it off with a low grunt, refocusing on the corridor ahead. "Ngh," he grumbled, "My head." He was so focused on his own sudden ache that he didn't even notice her speaking at the same time. After a moment, he gave a small cough, "Saw what?" His eyes searched around, uncertain what she was speaking of.


The ship's layout unfolded before them in piecemeal fashion. The main hallway they traversed ran the length of the midsection, with reinforced bulkheads showing signs of the impact's violence—buckled plates here, a ruptured conduit leaking faint wisps of coolant vapor there. One branching room appeared to be a compact galley, its contents likely scattered but potentially salvageable; the doorway was partially blocked by a table wedged into it, torn up from where it had been bolted to the deck. Another, closer to what he recalled as his own quarters, held promise of personal effects or emergency stores. Vendryn moved with cautious deliberation, conserving what strength remained while keeping Lumiya in his peripheral vision. Trust was a fragile thing here, born of necessity rather than choice, yet her earlier actions weighed on him like an unbalanced ledger.


"This way," he indicated with a tilt of his head toward a partially ajar hatch further along, his tone regaining some of its habitual authority. "My quarters should be just beyond. Perhaps I can finally change out of these," he gestured with a grunt of irritation at the state of his robes, and the glimpse of cerulean flesh beneath the tears. "Perhaps even some of my... other effects." The lightsaber, most importantly, though he left that unspoken for now. He paused at the threshold, one lower hand steadying himself against the frame as a wave of dizziness threatened. The ship groaned as it settled, the metal sighing with pain; a reminder of the need for haste. Whatever came next—salvage, recovery, or the inevitable tension of their mismatched natures—he would face it with the same calculated persistence that had kept him alive this long. Limits could be tested. Pushed. Even here.

Assuming the ship itself didn't reach its limits, anyway.

Lumiya Dara

 

[Lumiya Dara]

Lumiya glanced toward the hatch that he had indicated before following him at a slower pace. The corridor narrowed further here, forcing them to move single file through the fractured remains of the courier. Panels still occasionally sparked where systems had been cut mid-function, and the air carried the faint metallic tang of overheated circuitry rather than decay.

When Vendryn stopped outside what had once been his quarters, Lumiya immediately averted her gaze. "I'll search over here," she said, gesturing toward the adjoining galley and storage compartments. "You probably don't need an audience while you change." There wasn't the slightest hint of embarrassment in her voice, only that of simple practicality. And wthout waiting for a response, she slipped through the half-blocked galley entrance instead.

The room had clearly been shaken violently by the crash. Cabinets hung askew, several torn open by impact forces, their contents scattered across the floor. But nothing here was old or decayed; only disrupted. Emergency lighting still pulsed weakly overhead, and the air smelled faintly of sealed supplies and coolant.

Lumiya crouched beside a lower emergency locker whose seal had held through the impact. "Oh...." She carefully released the latch. Inside sat several vacuum-sealed emergency ration bars, a pair of compressed nutrient packs, and three intact emergency water canisters secured in foam restraints. "They really do put these everywhere." A faint, yet tired smile crossed her face.

She gathered the supplies into her arms before continuing her search, uncovering a few more ration packets wedged beneath an overturned storage crate. Not a full store, but more than enough to keep someone going. By the time she returned to the corridor outside Vendryn's quarters, her arms were full. "I found something," she called gently, careful to remain outside the doorway. "I'm not looking." After waiting a respectful moment, she set the supplies down just outside the threshold, arranging them into two uneven piles; one slightly larger than the other. "There wasn't much," she said simply. "But it's usable. My camp has more if we need it." Then, after a pause, she softened her voice slightly. "You've lost a lot of blood. You should take more than I do." It wasn't offered as charity, merely just as obvious reality.

She hesitated, then added with mild and careful honesty, "I hope that you find what you were looking for in there."

Tag: Vendryn Del'therak

 

[Vendryn Del'therak]

With a grateful dip of his head, Vendryn moved into his former quarters, exploring as much with his hands as with his eyes, as if trying to learn the unfamiliar shapes that it had become, and comparing them against his memories like landmarks, the old topography overwritten by a cataclysm. Furniture was overturned or destroyed, crushed and tangled into unnatural shapes by the incredible forces of a falling starship. His bunk had turned from a spacious nook into a compacted mess; if he had been laying down, he would have been killed even more surely than the rail through his chest. It was a good thing he had... What? Gone for a walk? Asked a question? The memories remained frustratingly vague and fuzzy around the edges, and he couldn't remember whether or not he'd had the weight of his lightsaber hanging at his hip. It was quite large, and unusually hefty, nearly double length and with an extremely dense power cell to ignite the longer-than-normal blade.

He turned slowly, looking around the compartment, and felt... nothing. No flicker of remembrance. No moment of clarity. The room he'd lived in for the past few weeks was as unfamiliar as a hotel room. He knew these were his belongings, but he felt no connection to them.

He snarled a curse and twisted his wrist, and the undamaged table in the center of the room twisted suddenly, like the stem of a flower crushed in a fist. He staggered from the effort of touching the Force, eyes briefly sinking closed with a rush of fatigue. Why can't I remember? He touched the massive rip in the chest of his robes. He knew why he couldn't remember, but that did nothing to quell the anger lapping at his knees like the rising tide. He knew it was fear driving his rage. What else have I lost? How would I ever know?

Lying there, pinned upon the wreckage, it was easy to ignore everything else. Easy to stay focused on mere survival, blocking out everything else, burying the stress, the fear, the sensation of helplessness. But now he had been saved, and it was a gap in his memory that was his nemesis?

He prodded at the gap in his memory like a sore tooth. He pulled off his shredded robes, tossing them to the floor along with the other waste and detritus. He turned to search through the twisted shape of the locker half-open along the wall, and caught sight of himself in the crazed glass that once stood as a mirror. Jagged panes were missing, like absences cut from his flesh. He could see himself in his reflection; trim, in passable shape, the hint of muscle definition etching his chest and stomach, the lines of his arms, the extra swell of muscle around his ribs where his lower arms anchored onto his spine.

In the middle of it all, like an abstract image of a rose, the swollen mass of scarred flesh where he had been impaled. Part of the scar was hidden from view, a void of darkness where a piece of the mirror had fallen out. Part of him wanted to shift aside so he could see it. Witness the thing that had almost killed him.

Yet his feet remained rooted to the floor. He couldn't move, or make himself move. It didn't even feel like fear, so much; he just willed his feet to move, or his body to lean, and it wouldn't answer him. Like his memories of immediately before the crash, there was just an absence; an error without explanation. He could not make himself look. He felt his chest throbbing with tightness, his heart suddenly rushing in his ears, roaring, an army of drummers pounding against the inside of his chest, slamming against his ribs like battering rams. His breath ran short. Sweat broke out across his forehead and a shiver wracked his limbs.

He felt himself descending, panic rising like bile in the back of his throat.

He slashed his right hands through the air, and the mirror came apart into tiny fragments that flew across the room and embedded themselves into the soft bulkhead covering like glittering rhinestones, echoing through the corridors like a gunshot.

He turned abruptly, feeling her presence outside the door. How long had she been there? He hadn't heard a word she'd spoken, drowned out by his roaring heartbeat.

"What?" He snapped, immediately regretting his tone. His irises had expanded until almost no white remained, rapid breathing visible in his tense, bare muscles. He was... a mess, with dried blood sticking to most of his body. There was a patch on his stomach where the imprint of his robes remained in dried blood, a delicate, swirling pattern somehow rendered obscene by the pebbled flakes of azure.

In the wake of his shout, there was silence; his heart had quieted, its pulse slowing as if cowed by the sudden outburst; or perhaps simply given an outlet. He no longer faced his reflection, with pieces missing from him in a twisted facsimile of his mental state. He turned away after a moment, staring at the shredded bulkhead glittering with glass shards, and turned away, rooting through the damaged locker for a change of clothes. "I'm almost done," he said, after a moment, his tone apologetic. "It was harder than expected to find intact clothing."

Lumiya Dara

 

[Lumiya Dara]

Lumiya had just finished arranging the ration packs outside the doorway when it happened. It wasn't a sound. Not at first. The sensation struck somewhere beneath conscious thought; a sudden tightening in her chest that wasn't hers, accompanied by a dizzying surge of alarm so intense it almost stole her own breath. For one disorienting heartbeat she simply froze, one hand still resting against a water canister. Fear. It was raw, immediate, and almost suffocating.

Her head lifted instinctively toward the closed doorway. "...Vendryn?" There was no answer. The feeling didn't resemble anything she had experienced through the Force before. It wasn't empathy as she understood it. It was closer to standing too near someone who had fallen through thin ice and feeling the shock of the freezing water yourself. The sensation vanished almost as quickly as it had come, leaving only a faint echo beneath her ribs.

Lumiya frowned. Had he reopened his wound Or?... Her eyes swept automatically down the corridor. The ship suddenly felt much larger. Much quieter. Every distant groan of stressed metal became suspicious. Every flicker of emergency lighting hinted at movement just beyond sight. Her pulse quickened as entirely practical thoughts took over. Could someone else have survived? Scavengers? Whoever attacked the ship?

Without quite realizing she had done so, Lumiya found herself stepping between the corridor and the doorway to Vendryn's quarters instead of away from it. Not defensively toward him, exactly; but instinctively placing herself where she could see anyone approaching.

Then the crash came. Glass exploded somewhere inside the quarters, shattering with a violent report that echoed down the corridor. Lumiya jumped despite herself. "Vendryn?"

His sharp "What?" reached her a heartbeat later.

Relief washed through her so abruptly that she almost laughed. "Oh." She let out the breath that she hadn't realized that she'd been holding. "I thought..." She glanced once more down the empty corridor before shaking her head. "I thought that maybe someone else was here."

Only then did she realize that she was still standing protectively outside his door. "...Sorry," she said quietly, taking a small step back to return him the privacy she had intended to give him in the first place.

Tag: Vendryn Del'therak

 

[Vendryn Del'therak]

He quickly redressed, pulling his spare robes around himself. They weren't as comfortable as his usual garb, but were thankfully harder-wearing, made of stronger fabric. They had survived the calamity with only a few new holes in them, mostly burns from where a nearby wire terminal had broken under the strain and showered everything around it in flecks of molten metal. It was closer-fitting, and less ornate, black with blue trim instead of his usual sapphire and gold. It cinched at the waist with a broad belt of black silk woven with energy-diffusing fibers that served as a belly guard, and had a harness at his left hip where his lightsaber would have ridden. Look as he might, he couldn't find his lightsaber within; not even twisted metal to show that it had been destroyed in the crash. With somewhat forced optimism, he laid the blame at the feet of his poor Sensing ability, even at the best of times; now was not, in fact, the best of times. Surely, with some rest and meditation, he would regain a semblance of his normal acuity and find his blade amongst the wreckage. He could not countenance the idea that it might have been cast free of the ship entirely somehow, perhaps even now doomed to orbit the world until the insistent tug of gravity turned it into an especially bright - and brief - meteorite.

He turned toward his bunk, looking toward the half-open locker and the possibility of something else concealed within... but ultimately decided it was too close to the glass. And with the glass, came the faint sensation of drowning, growing stronger the longer he stared at them, drawing him in as if a thousand wounded, broken, incomplete versions of himself stared back, filled with the same tremulous fear, perhaps seeing that same fracture in his appearance, that same-

He practically slammed the door to his quarters behind him, staggering again as that brief expenditure of the Force sapped at what little reserves he possessed. He was so deeply accustomed to having the Force beside him in every act, so attuned to its usage that now it felt like walking upon a phantom limb, every movement a twist of fresh agony and loss. He looked at Lumiya for several seconds, as if he wasn't really seeing her, before she returned into focus.

As did the offerings she had brought him. He stared at the two piles, only now parsing her words he had half-heard before. He blinked thrice in rapid succession, frowning down at it as if he wasn't quite sure what he was looking at. The simple selflessness, the unconscious, instinctive desire to assess his needs against her own and give them equal weight.

"Your... unexpected generosity continues to surprise me, Lumiya. I thank you for... your consideration of my state." He still stared at the emergency meals and water, thirst and hunger vying for dominance, straining the veneer of composure he wore as comfortably as his robes. Without realizing it, his lower left hand had reached out halfway, before retreating as if ashamed of the show of weakness.

"Yes... I think it would be good, to eat. Perhaps we should... go outside, away from... this. Perhaps the fresh air would do me some good. Perhaps I could find my..." He stopped, though his lower left hand stroked over the lightsaber harness as if hoping that he had somehow simply overlooked it.

"Fresh air and... real sunlight, I think, would be a pleasure." His lower arms gathered the skirt of his robe before him, and his upper arms delicately placed her collected spoils within. He took exactly half, and paused for a moment, the indecision clear on his face as he fought over whether or not to reject her offer of the lion's share... but after a mere moment, he seemed to cave to the hunger gnawing from within, and scooped up the rest of his pile. His inner eyes looked at her, consideringly, as if he had stumbled upon some new species he lacked the means to identify. Or perhaps a new feeling he was uncertain how to accept.

"Do you remember the way out, Lumiya?"

Lumiya Dara

 

[Lumiya Dara]

Lumiya watched his hand pause over the empty lightsaber harness. She said nothing. It was such a small gesture that someone less observant might have missed it entirely. But after everything that had happened aboard the wreck, she couldn't help noticing. People had tried to take her lightsaber before. Some out of hatred. Others out of ambition. A few simply because it was a Jedi's. The thought crossed her mind, however briefly, that Vendryn might eventually reach the same conclusion.

Almost unconsciously, her own hand settled lightly against the familiar hilt at her belt. Not possessively. But simply to reassure herself that it was still there. She hoped that it would remain only a passing thought. Then she looked back up at him and smiled faintly, as though nothing at all had crossed her mind. "I do," she answered softly. "We didn't come very far."

Bending carefully, she picked up her smaller share of the supplies, leaving him the larger portion without comment. To her, it simply made sense. He had lost far more blood than she had, and unlike her; he had no small camp waiting nearby with extra provisions.

She glanced once toward the corridor ahead, mentally retracing the route they had taken through the ship. "It should be this way." Without rushing, she started forward, moving at a pace that accommodated his injuries rather than her own. Every few steps she glanced back over one shoulder, partly to be certain he was keeping up, and partly because she was quietly measuring how much strength he truly had left.

The corridors remained dimly lit, emergency strips casting pale bands of light across battered deck plating. The wreck creaked softly around them as the desert wind pressed against the battered hull.

"We'll have to climb over one collapsed section," she warned gently. "It's not difficult....just awkward. And once we're outside..." She looked toward the faint glow of daylight filtering through a distant breach. "...I think that you'll appreciate the fresh air." And so would she.

The ship had begun to feel strangely close around them, filled with echoes neither of them seemed entirely comfortable carrying. Out beneath the open sky, perhaps, they could simply be two weary survivors sharing a meal before deciding what came next.

Tag: Vendryn Del'therak

 

[Vendryn Del'therak]

It seemed that the allure of sustenance was far too much to be denied. After a moment, Vendryn lifted one of the water paks to his lips and began to drink greedily from it; a normal pace, for anyone else, but the lack of decorum gave it an almost rapacious aspect, as if it were something to be conquered rather than consumed, and the way his hand trembled slightly was the only sign that the water was hitting him like a drug. Feelings he'd been ignoring, or else had been buried beneath avalanches of pain, finally had their chance to express themselves. He paused, leaning against one of the wall's support struts as he took a break from drinking to tear into one of the emergency bars. One hand gripped the bar itself while his two lower reached up to strip the casing away, his other upper hand gripping the water pak and giving it a slight slosh to determine how much was left.

There was a slightly glazed expression on his face, as if he were not entirely in control of himself as he delicately bit a large piece from the meal bar, added a little water, and chewed it steadily down. "The Force," he finally stated between mouthfuls, while he was catching his breath, "Is capable of great feats, incredible wonders, but it cannot create-" he paused to take a deep drink, crumple the empty pak, and then carefully tuck it into one of his belt pouches; even standing amongst the wreckage of an entire crashed ship, he instinctively refused to litter, "Cannot create something from nothing. There must always be fuel for its fire." He drew in a deep breath, eyeing the rest of the bar as if planning his attack. "I fear the healing took much fuel from me," he stated, in a tone almost like sharing a private joke, "And I am ravenous."

Carefully crumpling the meal bar wrapper and sticking it into another pouch, his face seemed to have cleared, some of the terrible paleness fading from his features. A faint violet sheen arose in his cheeks, as if from embarrasment, realizing he had just dispatched an entire emergency ration bar and a pak of water in less than a minute or so, consuming it as if it were a delicacy or a rare treat. His gaze returned to the path ahead, and while he didn't seem stronger, necessarily, he seemed more confident in his ability to move.

"Miss Lumiya," he asked a minute or so later, as they picked their way past a buckled bulkhead, his careful movements requiring him to stoop far more often than she, given the disparity in their height. "Where are you from, if I may ask? I should like to know a little more about you, if you would do me the honor." There was respect, but also curiosity, almost as if he were hoping to catch her in a lie, or expected her to say something outrageous. Even as they carefully maneuvered through the debris, his outer eyes guided his movements while his primary pair watched her curiously, as if hoping for some tell, some microexpression that would make her behaviors make more sense.

Lumiya Dara

 

[Lumiya Dara]

Lumiya smiled faintly as she watched him all but inhale the emergency rations. There was a quiet satisfaction that some color had begun returning to his face. "I did warn you that you should eat more than I do."

She stepped carefully over the buckled bulkhead, waiting until he had navigated it before continuing toward the distant opening where warm desert light spilled into the corridor.

His question lingered between them for several moments. "...I'm not entirely sure," she admitted at last. The answer seemed almost absurdly matter-of-fact. "I think that I was born somewhere in the Core Worlds." She tilted her head slightly, searching memories that had always been more impressions than certainties. "At least...that's what I've always believed. The Jedi found me when I was very young, as they tend to do." She ducked beneath another sagging beam before continuing. "After that....There wasn't really a place to be from."

A faint smile touched her lips, a hint of her youth well spent. "My Master traveled constantly. Relief missions. Negotiations. Medical assistance after disasters. Sometimes we stayed somewhere for weeks." She glanced back at Vendryn. "Sometimes only long enough to sleep." She seemed oddly content with the memory. "I used to think everyone lived like that." The smile softened. "Then one day he told me to stay behind...." She slowed almost imperceptibly as they reached the final stretch toward the breach in the hull. "There was a mission that he didn't want me accompanying him on." Her gaze remained ahead, resting on the daylight rather than the corridor around them. "So....I listened." A quiet breath escaped her, as she paused. "He never came back." There was no anger in her voice. Only the gentle sadness of someone who had long ago accepted that the galaxy did not always return the people it borrowed.

"For a while...." she continued softly, "....I kept expecting someone to tell me there had been a mistake, and that he was recovering somewhere and would send me a message." Another few steps carried them into the warmer air drifting in from outside. "But eventually I realized there wasn't one coming." She glanced back at Vendryn, offering him a small, almost apologetic smile. "So since then, I've mostly just gone wherever people needed help." The simplicity with which she said it somehow made it feel all the more true. There had never been a grand plan. No ambition for rank or recognition. Just one place after another, one injured stranger after the next, quietly trying to leave each world a little kinder than she had found it. That was how she liked to live.

Tag: Vendryn Del'therak

 

[Vendryn Del'therak]

His expression shifted toward the sympathetic, thoughtful. "I had no idea the Jedi were so..." He gestured vaguely, in a loose fashion. "Well, I suppose it fits that they would be rather... decentralized in their training methods, but I had no idea that some of them were simply..." He seemed to be struggling to find a way to phrase his words; it seems the usual phrases would be rather insulting, stilting his sentences as he fought to find a way to make them sound more neutral. "Free range Jedi, I suppose. Just... Ambling about, doing Good Things like well-intentioned vagrants. No offense," he added after a moment, realizing that last comment sounded rather offensive. "I always imagined it was more the... Council chambers, solemn affairs of Masters being assigned to go off and do... Helpful things, somewhere." He gestured dismissively. "The Order was always... surprisingly disorderly, to my eyes. The Sith are... extremely hierarchal. You know exactly where you stand in relation to others - there are your superiors, your inferiors, and your peers, and outside of... acts of succession, they stay relatively stationary. We do not often give orders so much as directives, generally allowing our inferiors to operate independently outside of specific scenarios; usually if a more delicate situation arises, your superior will intervene. Nuance," he added, after a moment, "Is generally a skill not well-cultivated until late in training; about the time of late Knighthood, relatively speaking. Usually those more possessing of such... acuity then make the steps necessary to rise in rank. Strength no longer matters quite so much as alliances and political acumen at the higher levels; anyone who simply tried to step in and succeed a Lord might succeed once, but when someone who refuses to play the game comes along, we often find a common enemy and set to correcting their behaviors."

He shook his head slightly, as if realizing he'd gone off on a tangent. "But it is... surprising that your Master simply left you behind without a word of instruction or a next-of-command, or the means to contact anyone to return to their service." A pause. "Though, I suppose 'service' is exactly what you've been doing, since then." He gave her a brief, appraising look. "But you're rather young, and clearly self-motivated. Clearly, you're following your... heart." It was meant to be a compliment, despite the hesitation. He almost sounded frustrated when he added, "I think it is lovely that you are pursuing the urge to help people, in whatever way you can, despite the rather disorganized method. How can you ever know if you're doing the most... Good that you can, with such a narrow perspective? With no one more experienced to... direct your efforts, discern the best uses for your skills?"

His mind seemed to be struggling to reconcile the idea of such a freeform approach to using the Force, the range of freedom seeming confusing and slippery to grasp. He was clearly trying to be thoughtful and conciliatory, even if his own prejudices weren't well-concealed. It was clear he was making an effort, at least.

"So you've just been... Drifting, since then? How long ago was that?"

Lumiya Dara

 

[Lumiya Dara]

By the time he finished speaking, the corridor had widened into the torn breach in the hull. Warm desert air washed over them, carrying the scent of sun-baked sand instead of scorched metal. The open sky stretched above them once more.

Lumiya stepped out first before setting her small bundle of supplies down upon a broad piece of fallen plating just outside the wreck. "I think..." she said, glancing back toward him with quiet concern, "...you've earned a chance to sit down before your body decides for you." There was the faintest trace of a smile as she motioned toward the relatively flat section of hull. Only after he had somewhere to rest did she settle nearby herself, drawing one knee up while the evening breeze tugged gently at the loose strands of her hair.

She considered his question for several moments. "I don't think that I was drifting." Her answer came gently, without any defensiveness at all. "My Master always used to say that helping one person wasn't somehow worth less simply because there were a thousand others we couldn't reach." She looked out across the endless desert. "You can't heal everyone." A small shrug lifted one shoulder. "But you can always heal the person standing in front of you."

Her fingers absently turned one of the unopened ration wrappers over in her hands. "I never really worried whether I was doing the most good." She smiled to herself. "I was content in knowing that I was doing some." Her eyes lifted toward the horizon where the sun continued its slow descent. "I don't keep score, anyways." The words were spoken so matter-of-factly they almost sounded surprising. "I don't know how many people I've helped. And I don't think that I'd want to." She glanced back toward him. "If someone leaves healthier than when I found them, then that already feels like enough."

Silence settled comfortably between them for a few moments before she answered the question he had asked last. "It's been a few years now, I think." She lowered her gaze briefly. "My Master knew me very well." There was warmth in her voice now as she recalled him fondly. "He understood that I wasn't suited for every assignment." She then laughed quietly to herself. "I've never been particularly interested in becoming important."

Another breeze swept across the wreck, stirring the edges of her robes. "And I wasn't especially interested in rank, either." She tilted her head thoughtfully. "I think...that sometimes the Order wanted me to become a different sort of Jedi. But my Master never seemed disappointed that I wasn't."

Her smile softened into something almost wistful. "So after he was gone..." She looked out across the desert once more. "...I just kept living the way that he taught me. And it turns out that that's been a very peaceful life."

Tag: Vendryn Del'therak

 

[Vendryn Del'therak]

He gave her a look that would've been reproachful, if he wasn't also certain she was right. Emerging from the ruined hulk, he settled carefully onto a spur of wreckage that had flattened into a shape almost like a lounger, if you perhaps squinted hard and tilted your head a bit; it was flat and he wasn't in immediate danger of falling off of it, so that seemed to be enough to meet his lofty standards.

There was a mixture of puzzlement and comprehension on his face. He seemed to roll the thoughts around in his head a bit, not yet voicing them, but instead changing tack.

"Well... I think I understand what kind of Jedi you want to be. Helping people. No matter how little it helps you or how much it costs you. How... selfless." He shook his head very slightly. "I suppose I can't say much for that, though, as your latest random act of kindness. I appreciate your intervention." He dragged his tongue over his lips for a moment, then took another deep drink of water. "I was taught to be what I became, but I had to learn who I was outside of it. It was... Difficult, always difficult, always pushing me to be more, greater, to learn, but in some ways it was quite easy. All I had to do was excel at the tasks placed before me. The House stood them up before me, and one by one, I knocked them down... But I never had to really look for a path, or define myself that way. I knew what I was doing, and where I was going. It's easy to excel when you have absolute certainty in what you should be doing. I never had to... doubt. Not until I was grown, anyway. I achieved what was required of me, excelled in some aspects, and... was not content. I did not know who I was outside of my work, and only later in life had to actually discover that. I've taken up... Various hobbies, along the way, though archaeology is my favorite. I go on the occasional expedition. Not as often as I would like, but more often than most will ever have the chance to, so I find it balances." He made a so-so gesture.

"In this case," he gestured to the ruined ship beside them, "I was on my way to a Sector Conclave to discuss the issue of piracy and attacks on some of the smaller worlds." He squinted upwards. "I had not thought it was such a serious issue, but I am beginning to think I may have been incorrect in that assumption. Given that no assistance has come from the ships in orbit, I can only assume either the battle is still ongoing or... they have retreated to gather reinforcements." He winced. "I hope it is not that they have been... defeated in detail, or else it may be some time before there is assistance. Worse... my attackers may come to inspect the ruins." He stared up at the sky as if the answer would be written in the clouds. "Perhaps we should be gone from this place... soon." He seemed reluctant to actually move from his perch, even though a bulge in the metal was digging into his lower shoulders uncomfortably. "Soon. But not just yet."

He drank the rest of the water pak, and laid his head back, staring up at the sky.

"For the record," he murmured, tilting his head to look toward her, "I do very much appreciate your random act of kindness, today, even though I repaid it rather cruelly at the time."

Lumiya Dara

 

[Lumiya Dara]

Lumiya smiled gently and gave a small shake of her head. "It wasn't random." Her fingers turned the ration packet over quietly in her hands as she looked out across the desert. "You needed help." To her, that explained everything. There was no great calculation behind it. No hidden purpose. Someone had been hurt, and she had been there. That was all.

For a while she simply sat beside him, listening to the wind move across the wreckage. Then, after a moment, she glanced back toward him with a thoughtful expression. "You know..." she began softly, "I don't actually know very much about you." Her gaze drifted briefly toward the damaged ship behind them before returning to him. "You've told me you're Sith. But....what are you?" Her question carried no suspicion. No challenge. Just a genuine curiosity. "I mean...." she added quickly, realizing how strange the question sounded, "....what do you do? You mentioned a Sector Conclave and investigating piracy. Were you there to study the attacks? To negotiate? To represent your House? Or was it something else entirely?"

It was only then that she seemed to realize how little she actually knew about him. She knew that he was dangerous. She knew that he had nearly killed her. She knew he had also chosen to stop. But beyond that, he was still something of a mystery.

Her expression then grew more thoughtful as another memory surfaced. "And there is something else I've been wondering." One hand rested lightly against the center of her chest, not because it hurt, but because the memory itself still felt strange. "When you were....taking my life energy...." She hesitated, searching for words that felt accurate. "I still don't really understand what happened." Her eyes lowered briefly. "It wasn't just that I had felt weaker." She looked toward the horizon, trying to explain something that still felt impossible to describe. "It was almost like part of me was being pulled toward you. And at the same time...." She frowned slightly. "It felt like another part of me was being drawn somewhere else." Her voice softened. "Somewhere deep. Dark." Then, almost reluctantly, she added, "And cold."

Lumiya looked back towards him. "I don't know if that was something that you experienced too." Her expression remained calm and open. "Or if it was only what it felt like from my side. I just know that I've never felt anything like it before."

Tag: Vendryn Del'therak