Private Bloody Emancipation

[Gatz Derrevar]

Ship: The Red Night
Weapons:
Tag: Kahlil Noble

The Red Night was adrift around the Trandoshan moon, Wasskah. She was dead as a doornail: engines powered down, interior and exterior lights dimmed, and it was only the back up generator that kept the artificial gravity and life support systems active—but even those would die in a matter of hours. Attached to her port docking collar was a smaller, far less ostentatious vessel, which doubled as the cause for why Gatz's prized ship was dead in the water.

Damn ion weapons. If it had been normal turbolasers, he'd have won the dogfight.

Gatz sat on the ground in the hallway that connected the cockpit, port docking collar, and starboard docking collar. A brutal mess was strewn about him: five dead Trandoshans whose blood and bodies had made a mess of his ship from the cockpit all the way to the ladder that led down to the cargo bay. Slavers, looking to reclaim a prize Gatz had wrest from their hands. He'd succeeded... but only partially.

The blaster wound to his leg, and the knife sticking out of his gut made his victory somewhat pyrrhic. So did the woman and two children hiding in the cargo bay, adrift in a dead ship with him. His goal had been to ferry them to safety, but at this rate, they were going to run out of air with him.

Gatz let out a weak, pained sigh. Who was he kidding? He'd be dead long before he ran out of air. A gut wound with no hospital in sight? Yeah, he was toast.

His only hope was that R4 had managed to transmit their rescue beacon to the Jedi Temple. If the Order could save his passengers... well, then Gatz could die with some measure of peace. That was enough for him.

 

[Kahlil Noble]

"Well isn't this a role reversal."

Whenever there was trouble, Kahlil didn't hesitate to give assistance. People needed help, wanted help, it didn't matter. He was a Jedi, and there wasn't any reason to hesitate. To think it was Gatz, though. He rang up the holocom as the Bastion pulled in closer. A ship dead in open space was easy pickings for scrapers, better not to waste any time with docking or asking permission.

"Fill me in on what's going on, alright?"

Gatz Derrevar

 

[Gatz Derrevar]

Ship: The Red Night
Weapons:
Tag: Kahlil Noble

Gatz had just begun to nod off, potentially for the last time in his life, when his comm rang. The noise came from the cockpit, but with a knife in his abdomen and carbon scoring marring his leg, he was in no shape to get up and walk to it. Thankfully, Gatz had long since set The Red Night's holocom to forward to his personal commlink.

Weak fingers dug the little unit out of his pocket. It took a moment for his dull eyes to focus, but when they did Gatz found that he very much recognized who was calling. He let out a shallow sigh of relief. With Kahlil here, that meant his passengers were safe. The Shield could more than handle the rest of this botched rescue.

"Slavers..." Gatz's voice was weak and wavering, his strength all but sapped by his wounds, "all dead. Have people on board that need your help. Use... the starboard docking collar."

His arm slapped to the ground, no longer able to even hold itself up.

 

[Kahlil Noble]

"You sound pretty bad yourself, you know."

If he hazarded a guess, he was likely dying while everyone else was shaken up, but actually fine. Which meant there was no time to delay. He pulled on his controls, guiding his ship over with relative ease to ensure they were docked before he made his way onto the other ship. The once slaves were worried, naturally, but he simply smiled. They could discuss this later, in more detail.

Thankfully they recognized the Shield for who he was and the mother ushered her children on board the other ship. That let him focus instead on Gatz himself, who seemed out cold in his chair.

"Gotta wake up smuggler. I'm no medic." He could stop the bleeding at least, which he did with a couple runes. But it was by no means actual healing. "Let's get you to my ship."

Gatz Derrevar

 

[Gatz Derrevar]

Ship: The Red Night
Weapons:
Tag: Kahlil Noble

At some point, he did nod off. If he'd been of sound enough mind to think straight, he'd have known that that was a terrible thing to do in the face of injuries this severe. Death would claim him easily in his sleep, and for all his faults and struggles, Gatz wasn't ready to become one with the Force just yet. Not while there was still so much to set right.

"Gotta wake up smuggler. I'm no medic."

"I'm... sorry Kahlil," Gatz, forced out through his delirium, "it took me too long to... understand what you were trying to teach me. But I tried my best to be a Jedi... in the end."

It shouldn't have taken bleeding out to realize that the man hadn't been trying to run him out of the Order. The lesson had been so simple, but like always, Gatz had been too wrapped up in pity and misery to understand it: stop doubting, and start doing. Well... if nothing else, he understood now. Granted, he'd flubbed the doing part by getting himself stabbed but...

It was a valiant effort. Gatz found some satisfaction in that.

Kahlil had to practically carry him to The Bastion, with the way Gatz could summon no strength. Once, he might have been ashamed to need such help. Once, he might have simply accepted his quiet death, knowing he deserved it. And maybe he still did, but he wasn't willing to tap out just yet.

But Kahlil was no medic—even if he had somehow stopped the bleeding—and Gatz wasn't in any condition to patch himself up. Tapping out might not be his choice.

 

[Kahlil Noble]

"I don't recall teaching you how to get stabbed, but you seemed to do good on that."

Kahlil chuckled softly as he lifted Gatz up to carry the wounded man back to the Bastion. As gently as he could, all things considered. Kahlil was a big man with a lot of natural strength, but he wasn't without his own faults. "There's bacta in the medical wing. You won't die, but there's no stopping a scar. And you don't want to move much."

He could stop the bleeding, albeit temporarily. The pain? Not so much. Gatz wouldn't die, but he'd certainly still feel like it until the bacta was applied. "You're not going to die yet, Gatz. Why don't you tell me more on what you learned?"

Keep focused on something else, that would help. Probably. Kahlil grimaced just out of sight as he carried Gatz into the medical wing to lay him out on the table. Maybe he should take some basic first aid classes some time.

Gatz Derrevar

 

[Gatz Derrevar]

Ship: The Red Night
Weapons:
Tag: Kahlil Noble

"I don't recall teaching you how to get stabbed, but you seemed to do good on that."

"Nope, that skill is all me," Gatz chuckled, and then immediately groaned, "ugh, don't make me laugh. That smarts."

There was a medical wing on The Bastion? He hoped it was better stocked than the makeshift medbay on The Red Night. There was a time when Gatz probably could have taken care of this wound on his own ship, but destitution had a way of draining a man's resources and supply chain. He'd have been lucky to find painkillers onboard now.

But Kahlil promised bacta, and that meant that Gatz's chance of surviving this wound just skyrocketed.

"Eh, what's another scar? I'm already covered in them." Hardly his finest joke, but he'd been stabbed and shot, so he figured he could be forgiven.

To Gatz's surprise, Kahlil seemed to want to quiz him on the topic of his lesson. An odd time to do it, considering he was still bleeding out and—oh. Kahlil was trying to keep him awake. That was smart of him.

"I figure... I can wallow in misery all I want, but it's not gonna change a damn thing. Won't bring my family back, won't undo the harm I've done, and it's not going to make me a better Jedi. And the time I spend sulking and doubting myself is better spent doing something productive: like swallowing my pride and asking for the help I need."

 

[Kahlil Noble]

"That sounds about right."

Kahlil chuckled a bit. It was a more in depth lesson than he'd originally wanted to help Gatz to realize, but it worked well enough. Ish. Him getting stabbed certainly wasn't part of what Kahlil was trying to teach. He left Gatz on the medical bed as he went to take out some bacta pads. This wasn't a makeshift medical room, but a fully stocked wing.

The Bastion had been his home when he fled from the Sith. A medical wing was a necessity.

"Though I was more focused on trying to get you to stop letting self doubt cripple and poison your relationships with others. It's good you found more to learn."

Gatz Derrevar

 

[Gatz Derrevar]

Ship: The Red Night
Weapons:
Tag: Kahlil Noble

Oh hey, the medical bed was nice. But Gatz didn't allow himself to relax, or really sink into it just yet. He knew that if he did, he'd pass out almost immediately, and Kahlil would have an easier time keeping him alive if he was awake to help. But that didn't mean that keeping his eyes open was an easy feat. He'd lost a lot of blood, he was tired, and he was in no small amount of pain.

But if Kahlil was going through all this trouble to save his life, the least Gatz could do was try to survive.

"It's funny: there was a time when I was confident—or maybe arrogant is the better word," Gatz wasn't sure if he was talking to Kahlil, or himself, "but I wasn't exactly a decent man during those days. I guess, somewhere along the way, I began to associate confidence with sin. And some small part of me has always been afraid that if I don't doubt myself, I'll slip right back into those old habits."

Gatz wheezed out a pained groan. Maybe talking so much wasn't the best idea when he had a hole in his gut.

"But maybe it's time to start trusting myself; to trust that I know the difference between right and wrong. Or maybe I'm just bleeding out and babbling, what the hell do I know?"

 

[Kahlil Noble]

"Without faith in yourself, how can you believe in others?"

Kahlil reached over, applying the bacta right to the wound. Which would hurt, at least at first. Not that Kahlil seemed particularly worried about it. Pain meant they were still alive after all. When they stopped feeling pain, it probably meant they were going to die.

"Who you were, and who you are, don't have to be the same. Let go of the past already. You are someone different now, Gatz. I've seen as much."

Gatz Derrevar

 

[Gatz Derrevar]

Ship: The Red Night
Weapons:
Tag: Kahlil Noble

"Without faith in yourself, how can you believe in others?"

"Without faith in myself, how can I ask others to believe in me?" Gatz agreed.

Kahlil tended to his wound then. Gatz let a hiss out through his teeth, long since having stopped caring about letting others see him in pain. This wasn't Nar Shaddaa, and he wasn't a thug surrounded by other thugs—no one was going to accuse him of weakness, and capitalize on it. Besides, plenty of studies showed that having a verbal reaction to pain actually helped lessen it.

Probably placebo effect, but if it worked, then Gatz was happy to grumble at the pain.

There was wisdom, as always, in what the Shield was saying to him. To be able to let go of the past, finally leave that man behind and live life fully... he was so close to figuring out how to do that.

But one hurdle remained.

"I want to. So badly. I'm so tired of ripping myself apart. But there's one thing I haven't figured out yet," Gatz admitted, "Kahlil, what do I do with all the guilt?"

 

[Kahlil Noble]

"Talk to a therapist, most likely."

It probably wasn't the answer Gatz was looking for, but Kahlil didn't have an answer. "Everyone handles their own problems in different ways. I've nothing that can help you handle it, but there are people who were trained specifically to. Talk with them, be honest, and they'll help you figure out the next step for you."

Gatz Derrevar

 

[Gatz Derrevar]

Ship: The Red Night
Weapons:
Tag: Kahlil Noble

"That's exactly what I was hoping to avoid."

Gatz sagged back into the medical cot with a sigh. It wasn't that he'd never had the thought of going to therapy, it was just... well, he always found a way to avoid it. He shouldn't need that kind of help. He should be capable of handling his mind on his own. But if the last year was anything to go by, then he just wasn't. Even just admitting that to himself made him burn with shame.

It was frustrating, that he could turn his life around, do so much good, and yet be entirely incapable of quieting his mind's treacherous whispers.

"I..." It was hard to put his hesitation into words, so he didn't, "I'll think on it. Thank you. For the wisdom, and for saving my life."

 

[Kahlil Noble]

"You shouldn't avoid it. While they don't really give you answers, they do help you find them. Or your Master might help better." He had one now, who would be their own help he imagined. But Kahlil wasn't the person to ask those questions. His answers wouldn't be anything that would help Gatz.

Their histories were just too different.

"For now though, focus on feeling better. We'll bring that family to the Temple to help figure out where to take them next."

Gatz Derrevar

 

[Gatz Derrevar]

Ship: The Red Night
Weapons:
Tag: Kahlil Noble

"Yeah, I'm not really getting anywhere on my own," Gatz admitted, "I'll look into getting more... professional help."

Pride and ego wrestled with him, even now, trying to refuse to let him seek additional help. Trying to tell him that he should be able to confront these issues and solve them on his own. But pride and ego were often wrong, and in his case, they damn near always were. For once, he was able to set them aside. Gatz wasn't sure he if he could trust some random therapist or psychiatrist, but... maybe Inanna could help. Or at least guide him.

He'd start there. Any other, bigger decisions could wait until he no longer had a hole in his gut.

"I'll leave the rest to you," Gatz wasn't even reluctant to let Kahlil take the reins of his botched rescue mission, "I owe you one: for saving them, and for saving me. I'll find some way to pay you back, I promise."

 

[Kahlil Noble]

"We're Jedi, Gatz. We don't pay each other back for helping people or have those kinds of debts." He shook his head with a smile before leaving Gatz to at least rest. It wouldn't be long before they made it back to Coruscant, so for now he went back to the family to make sure they were settled and ready for what was going to come next. It was likely they'd need a new home.

Gatz Derrevar

 

[Gatz Derrevar]

Ship: The Red Night
Weapons:
Tag: Kahlil Noble

"We're Jedi, Gatz. We don't pay each other back for helping people or have those kinds of debts."

"I owe you and Valery for a lot more than just today." Gatz sighed, "but if you're half as stubborn as your wife, then there's no point in me arguing. Fine: no debts. But you guys better call me if there's ever something I can actually do for your family."

Granted, there was quite literally nothing he could do that the two of them couldn't. Except be cannon fodder, maybe, but neither of them would ever actually allow him to give his life for theirs. The Nobles were good people, sometimes annoyingly so. Always doing something for him, never letting him do anything in return for them. He appreciated all they'd done for him... but he felt guilty for accepting that help.

He felt like a leech.

"Alright. I'm gonna rest my eyes for a bit, now that I can do so without the risk of dying." He snorted, "thanks again, Big Guy."