Private Class Warfare

[Makko Vyres]

Oh no he wasn't having that.

"Think before I act?!" he replied incredulously. There was colour rising up his neck and across his cheeks.

He took a step closer, finger remaining levelled at her chest.

"I'm so poor and stupid it must be Makko's fault! After all, he wasn't the one throwing rocks at people!"

He didn't shout. There was a hard edge to his tone, but it was still obviously a hot flash of anger.

There was a difference between this and when Makko truly meant to be menacing. A very large difference. It was when he barely whispered at all that the street thug was about to become genuinely dangerous.

"I had noticed that I was fething wet! But thanks for explaing that to me too. Maybe you can explain drinking next so I don't forget and drop dead!"

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora could admit that it was childish of her to throw the rock. To herself, of course—not to him.

"It's not because of that-" She didn't want to echo 'stupid and poor', "It's because you're a big jerk!"

She had half a mind to withhold the water bottle from him, but realized that doing so would be insurmountably cruel. And here they'd started to get along, if only slightly.

"Why are you here, anyway? Do you even want to be a Jedi?"

Her tone was steeped in haughty anger. Cora knew that she wanted to be here, at least. Why was a street thug, who seemed content to act like a street thug, putting himself through all of this?

Makko Vyres

 

[Makko Vyres]

"Oh a big jerk am I? Well..."

Makko's conscious brain finally caught up with her accusations.

That one hit home.

Not in the way that added fuel to the fire, but a direct strike to his insecurities. Right in a place where he didn't have an immediate retort.

The hand went down.

"Well I'm here," he said petulelantly.

Point Cora.

"Bet you're just here because Daddy told you were special." He finally came back at here, but it was too late. He had already taken a step back, physically giving ground as he floundered to find something for his anger to hold on to.

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora stood her ground, hands that were previously at her hips now balled into fists, prepared to withstand anything he threw back at her.

Her cheeks puffed out.

"I am here to support my family and my people." She corrected bitterly. "It is imperative that I perform well as a Jedi, so that Ukatis can receive protection from the Galactic Alliance."

In a way, he was right. She'd only come to Coruscant at her family's behest, because Cora did whatever they asked. Because it was her duty.

"It's called responsibility, which I assume you know nothing about."

Makko Vyres

 

[Makko Vyres]

He was slow to rally, the earlier strike still had him off-kilter. Makko was trying to find words to spit back, when part of his mind wanted to dig into that question:

Why did you stay with the Jedi?

"So you're here because daddy told you to be here. Right. Thanks for clearing that up!" he replied. He did, at least, hold his ground this time.

"You don't get the time to do charity work for daddy when you got nothing to eat yourself," he snorted.

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

"I'm here because I want to be!" She insisted. Whether or not Cora truly believed that wasn't the point; the point was to make him think that.

Not that he seemed particularly convinced.

"What do you mean by that?" She snapped, daring a step forward. "You don't even know anything about me or my family!"

Makko Vyres

 

[Makko Vyres]

"What I mean..."

And this time, clinging to the offensive and letting her direct comment wash away, he stepped forwards too.

He was breathing hard, his face was flushed and he had to space out each word. It had the effect of sounding like deliberate punctuation when he was struggling for air. His heart was thumping loud enough to hear it inside his own head.

"Is that if you didn't have all that education and money, maybe you wouldn't get to pretend to make choices. You would be too busy trying to survive. Family responsibility. Charity jobs. Luxiries most don't get!"

He leaned into the rant now, fixing his gaze upon hers. He was down, but not out. He could win this. He would win this.

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora felt like she was about to grind her teeth into dust. Her motives for joining the Jedi had been questioned by the other Padawans, but never so aggressively. And never by a thug.

She wouldn't admit that there were some kernels of truth to what Makko was saying-maybe even more than kernels. Wealth, education, and status had made it far easier for her to survive than most. Not just survive—thrive. This was something that Cora herself was only vaguely aware of, having never truly experienced how the other 99% lived.

"You think that I'm here for charity?" She hissed, balling and unballing her fists, feeling the crescent shaped indentations of her nails biting into her palms. "I don't know about you, but I'm taking this seriously. This is a job, one that I'll gladly do if it means that I can protect my people."

Cora's reasoning for joining the Jedi may be skewed, but she'd worked hard in her studies. When Makko stalked closer, and she lifted her chin to him, boldly meeting his sharp gaze with a challenging one of her own.

"We're both here on technical equal footing, so why aren't you acting like you want to be here?"

Makko Vyres

 

[Makko Vyres]

Technical equal footing?

Makko pursed his lips. His throat bobbed but no words were formed. He was a broken young man. Life had done that to him.

But he had never expected that Cora, lashing out in her frustration, would find some of the cracks.

There was no immediate retort as she hit that same note, but this time he didn't step backwards. He stepped forwards. His accusing finger became an open hand and he grabbed the front of her tunic, just below the breastbone.

Makko drew them close together, scant inches between them. His firm grip held fast, but his hand trembled.

"Go on," he said, "Say it. Tell me you don't think I deserve to be here."

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

When he curled his fist onto her shirt and yanked forward, Cora gasped. It hadn't hurt, but the sudden roughness of the gesture surprised her.

She hadn't intended to get under his skin, but could not deny that it was somewhat cathartic to see him as frustrated as she was. Maybe even more.

"I don't know if you deserve to be here or not!"

Cora grimaced, close enough to feel the heat of his breath with every angry exhale.

"I think you're rude and mean and, and…" She stammered for more descriptors, not quite sure where she was even going with this. "Last night when I was…unnerved, you could have just laughed at me. In fact, that's what I had expected you to do—but you didn't. Despite being incredibly crude, you…made me feel little better."

Admitting this was somehow equally cathartic and embarrassing. Tilting her head away from Makko, she gazed into the expanse of jungle as if the right words would be written there. Cora's gaze refocused on Makko, this time with a softer edge.

"That has to be worth something, right?"

Jedi empathy was a thing, she imagined.

Makko Vyres

 

[Makko Vyres]

As she started to stammer, Makko could see victory. That brought a contrasting mixture of feelings. Satisfaction was tainted by the guilt of shocking her into that position.

But she didn't stop.

She continued to try and search for a reason why he should be here.

His hand very slowly relaxed. The balled up twist of fabric keeping some of its distorted shape as he released it.

He huffed. A single, sharp breath out. Makko didn't looked away, but his expression went from driving home a forceful argument, to searching for something in her eyes as she looked back at him.

"I didn't know what a jedi was until a few weeks ago. Thought this was all some kind of weird cult. So I'll say it: I don't think I deserve to be here."

It was far, far harder to say that out loud to the pompous noble than to finish an argument with her. Showing weakness back on Denon was like bleeding in a pool of sharks.

"Showing you a kindness is just...being a person."

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora was keenly aware of the hold Makko had on her shirt, and silently relieved when his grip loosened. Brows knit with minor irritation, she smoothed down the bunched section of fabric.

Her hands suddenly stopped when he confessed. She'd had an inkling that he'd felt that way, but never thought that he'd say it out loud. Cora frowned.

"Well that's...it's only been a few weeks! Of course you're going to feel out of place." She reasoned with both hands gesturing, perhaps a bit to hurriedly.

"I've been here for months and I'm still not sure if I'm cut out for this Jedi business…" Trailing awkwardly, she realized that drawing the attention towards her own insecurities may not have been the most empathetic move. Maybe she was going for the commiseration route.

Rubbing her head with an open palm, Cora grimaced as she pulled a wet leaf from her hair between two pinched nails. A sharp flick of her wrist sent it to the ground.

"Showing kindness is the sign of a good person. You'd be surprised at how many people can't manage to be kind when called for."

A beat passed as her eyes found the scars between his fingers, then the one at his lip for the first time.

"Or maybe you wouldn't be surprised." She murmured quietly, almost shamefully.

Makko Vyres

 

[Makko Vyres]

Makko took a step back. He instinctively shielded his scarred hand with the other. His fingertips ran across those lines.

Rather than being hard ridges, they felt like a weakness in the integrity of his skin. Like hollow spaces that hadn't been filled in properly.

His tattoos and scars were few compared to the older members of Fractal State. Now he was faced with the reality that this wasn't the normal way of the world.

"If I was kind," he said, revealing the scars between his fingers again, "I would have refused when I was told to be the one holding the knife."

Even as he made the honest admission, part of his found a way to be frustrated that Cora had found a way to diffuse the tension first.

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Their frustration had fizzled into something...weird. Something sober. Cora knew anger well, but she wasn't exactly sure what this was.

She watched in morbid fascination as Makko withdraw his scarred hand, caressed the lines between his fingers, then uncovered them for her to see. She peered closer. Her face screwed into a mix between horror and sadness.

"Who made you do such a thing…?"

She figured he hadn't elected to do so on his own. She hoped.

Cora chanced a cautious step closer, idly rubbing the space between her pointer and index finger. It looked like it had hurt.

Makko Vyres

 

[Makko Vyres]

"Yeah, it hurts," Makko replied, despite the fact that she hadn't asked the question. He made a single slicing motion between his fingers, from the palm towards the back.

"For days you can't move your fingers without it being real painful."

If Makko had known the word 'excruciating' he might have used that.

"Doesn't matter who did this to me, or who made me do it to others. Every group had their own thing. Least we don't put out cigarras on people's faces."

"Used for drug pushers and chip runners who didn't follow orders," he continued to explain. He rubbed at his hands, because an echo of the pain resurfaces in those hollow, empty spaces.

Makko offered a brief smile. For once, not a look born of cruel amusement. He didn't want her thinking he was just after sympathy, but it was actually nice to explain his fears to someone.

To the last person in the quadrant he would imagine telling.

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora winced at the gesture, involuntarily curling her own fingers into a fist. She had never thought of between the fingers being a painful place.

Group? Drug pushers? Orders?

She gathered that he'd been part of a gang, which fit with her picture of Denon. A tech-savvy, crime ridden city-planet.

Even if Makko wasn't trying to garner her sympathy, he had it. Cora had been punished by her father's hand before, but those bruises were intentionally unseen. Not out in the open as a permanent reminder. She couldn't help but watch his hands as he tried to rub the memories from between his fingers.

Her fist uncurled, and Cora spread out her fingers, staring intently, turning her palm over and back again. With her other hand, she pinched the webbing between her middle and pointer fingers between her nails, and yelped. "Ow!" It probably wasn't one tenth, one hundredth of the pain of an actual blade slicing the delicate nerves, but it had gotten the point across enough. For her, at least.

Cringing sharply, she rubbed the sore space between her fingers, suddenly feeling rather dumb for doing that.

"That is...cruel. So very cruel. I'm sorry that something like that was done to you, Makko."

Makko Vyres

 

[Makko Vyres]

"It's done," he said. "Showing that you could take it was part of the whole thing. Won't let anyone do that to me again."

There was nothing harsh in his tone, but there was something that let her know he wasn't going to be delving any further into his past for her. Not right now.

He had surprised her by showing some humanity and kindness - even if it had come laced with crude commentary - and now she surprised him in turn.

Makko didn't know what to feel. He had burst out of the collapsed shelter full of hot anger and adrenaline. Those feelings couldn't just disperse in an instant without an outlet and he didn't know what to do with himself.

He found himself just staring at Cora with nothing to say.

He took a breath.

"Well, I collapsed that, but you still shouldn't have thrown a rock at me."

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora blinked. This again?

"I will stop throwing rocks at you when you stop being such a pervert." She scoffed. Still irritated, but less teeth-grindingly than before, her tone was clearly in the haughty range.

Cora's gaze shifted to the sad state of their shelter. Her stomach grumbled at the same time.

Kneeling down, she retrieved one of the sticks, turning it over in her hands, inspecting it for nothing in particular before returning it to the pile.

"I don't suppose that you know how to hunt?"

Makko Vyres

 

[Makko Vyres]

In Makko's mind, he had tried to build a bridge about the shelter. It hadn't felt like trying to start the argument going again. Cora had levelled another accusation at him.

He didn't have the energy to come back at her over it. Instead she received a sidelong, withering glare for it. He was done.

"The only think we have is rats and pigeons and I don't think eating them would be a good idea," Makko replied.

He frowned, trying to think of what animals they had explained were in the jungle.

"Tie a knife to a stick and try and ambush something small?" he offered.

"And also..."

Apparently he wasn't done.

"if you think an arm around the waist - evenifithadbeendeliberate - is perverted..."

Makko spread his arms into a shrug and shook his head.

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora's upper lip curled into a grimace. The prospect of eating rats and pigeons was about as unappealing as going hungry.

Makko's impromptu spear idea did garner a thoughtful twist of her lips. "Maybe we could try fishing with it? That might be easier."

Stepping a few paces away, she pushed back a palm frond to better survey their surroundings. A river she'd spotted yesterday snakes through the valley about half a mile away.

Her head lurched back at Makko's unexpected comment and she flushed almost immediately.

"Deliberate??" That was the word she'd latched onto. Dropping the branch, she huffed her way over to him and jabbed an accusatory finger at the other Padawan's chest.

"It wouldn't be nearly as perverted if you weren't so crude! You should keep your hands to yourself. Context matters." She sniffed. "No one does that where I'm from.”

Teenagers were teenagers wherever you went in the galaxy, but Cora was particularly sheltered. Never had she snuck off with a boy into the forest or at the blind spot of a wall, but others her age certainly had.

“That type of behavior is saved for marriage."

Makko Vyres