Private Disconnect | Loske

[Auteme]

R E N E G A D E
Tag: Loske Treicolt ​

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It was time to end this. This streak of loneliness, this feeling of loss, this disconnect. Everyone had been working so hard and struggling through so much. Auteme had been watching, sidelined, of her own volition. She was trying to help on Coruscant but being so far from the people she was closest with hurt her. And now that she saw them again... she didn't feel better.

And it sucked.

"Loske..." She really drew out the kuh. "This sucks..." That wasn't very descriptive. The other padawan had come in to her quarters to talk, not hear Auteme whine into her pillow. Loske had been there to support Auteme in the past. When they were both feeling down, was it right for her to hoard all the attention? This was terrible. She was being unfair. That wasn't how a Jedi should've acted. That wasn't how a good friend should've acted. But there she was, face down on her bunk, sighing and bumbling about stuff that Loske was surely experiencing equally.

Her newly-appointed position as a Senate Scribe had only been confirmed this week, but her studies at the University of Coruscant had occupied her time ever since she'd started less than a month ago. In that time the other padawans had gone off and fought on Muunilist. Bernard had even come back -- not that she'd talked to him yet, given that cold Arkanian demeanor. And soon they'd be heading to Ilum. Into more danger. To a place where Auteme did not dare follow.

She missed them, desperately. She wished for peace. She just wanted to see her friends happy and safe but the galaxy kept bringing more conflict. Auteme could just watch, but Loske had to actually go through it. Being like this was selfish and wrong. Auteme rolled over, looking at the blonde on the other side of the room. "Sorry," she started. "So, um... are you alright?" The disconnect simply grew more apparent. Auteme felt sick again. She grabbed her pillow and brought it onto her face, groaning at herself and her awful lack of word-goodness.

 

[Loske Treicolt]

As a whole, The Renegade didn't offer much in terms of privacy. The freighter was intimate by most standards, and having the entire group of gallivanters on the ship was starting to get uncomfortable. Smells were beginning to mix, and worse, e m o t i o n s.

Absently, Loske cast a wayward glance toward the ventilation system and furrowed her brows with unfounded suspicion before offering a sigh and unfolding her arms. It was convenient Auteme was on the bottom bunk, or this would have been a very neck-craning situation. Instead, she perched herself on the edge of the mattress and leaned against one of the supporting posts. She ran a palm along it, and when she got to hip-height, dropped her hands to her lap.

Are you alright used to be such an easy question to answer. The more experience gained, the more layers were piled onto that response.

It took a lot of strength not to reply to the are you alright with No, I'm Loske.

"Yeah, I'm alright. Better than the last time one of us was stuck in a bed." A knowing smile was offered and she knocked her knees together. Auteme had been part of the healing process for Loske after that wretched duel on Muunilinst, and it was very likely that without her help the surgeries and alchemized arteries would not have been quite so successful.

"Allssooo, probably better than you right now. You seem off." Auteme 's demeanour on this mission had been conclusively forlorn. from the get-go. The blonde could only speculate the origin of the feelings, but it was never helpful to jump to conclusions.

Talking things out always seemed to help.

"What sucks? What's going on?"

 

[Auteme]

Loske Treicolt ​

Just be honest. That was all it took, really. It was silly to try and hide what she was feeling or why she was feeling it... then again, humans were rather silly creatures.

"Yeah, you're looking a lot better now." Feeling it, too. Loske had been unconscious for most of the treatment but even in that state Auteme could feel the concentration of difficult feelings swirling around in her friend. They hadn't really had time to talk or catch up afterwards, either -- as soon as Loske had recovered, Auteme needed to head back to meet with the Chancellor. That was important and she didn't regret it, of course, but she did miss talking to Loske.

So it was probably important to use this time wisely. The padawan took the pillow off her face and sat up, before shimmying back to lean against the wall. She tapped the pillow in her lap as she thought up a response for Loske.

Lots of things sucked. The state of the galaxy, the desecration of Ilum, this feeling of loneliness that Auteme had saddled herself with. Maybe she needed a therapist. Maybe just talking to someone who understood her would be enough. "I just... miss you guys, I guess," she said. Ever since she'd gone to Coruscant, and the other padawans headed off to fight against the Sith, she felt like she hadn't talked to any of her friends. Even now... "The real you. This whole deal, and you guys all fighting and going through all this terrible stuff... I feel like there's nothing I can do. That I'm just watching, because I'm not the same and I can't help, and... and everyone's just miserable because of everything."

She brought her hands up to her face and let out a sigh. "Loske, if your wounds had been any worse... you might've died before I could've helped you. I mean, the Force lightning was close to having done serious brain damage, and that..." Operations on the brain were always the most dangerous, and Force healing that process likely only would have led to the damage becoming irreversible.

"I'm scared for you guys, all the time. And... I just feel stupid because you guys are doing the hard stuff while I'm paralyzed on the sidelines. And when you guys come back, and I... I feel you, it just hurts because I don't know how to help. Ryv worries me the most because he feels responsible for it all and I can't help him." She brought her hands down and looked at Loske, her eyes filled with fear. "I want you guys to be safe, and happy, and... everything is just telling me no. And that hurts."

 

[Loske Treicolt]

"Thank you, much of that is thanks to you." Loske tucked a loose strand of blonde behind her ear when Auteme made the comment that she interpreted as humourous, and exhaled a huff of appreciation. The smile that had suffused it's way to her mouth quickly faded when her fellow Padawan delved into her feelings.

Auteme gave the would-be Kiffar a lot to unpack. Loske leaned into the explanation and didn't speak until she was given permission by the other's pause. All the while though, she chewed the inside of her cheek and nodded along.

Even in the wake of sincere upset, Loske gleaned a sliver of joy from the unique personality trait of the Padawan -- her innate ability to take a single subject, and string it into a factual tidbit of information. Force Lightning and brain damage. Here Loske was just thinking she'd had her skin fried and some of her insides roasted. She hadn't even considered her ability to think.

Maybe that's because she had her brain fried.

Oh, that was a bit meta. She blinked in abject surprise at that confounding realization.

"Feeling both scared and stupid at the same time is super exhausting." She agreed. She'd felt both after Muunilinst, before she'd had the chance to apologize to Maynard. The entire outcome of their fight with the Darth had been her fault, and if she'd been less vulnerable to the woman's goadings, perhaps the pair would have had a triumph to report instead of them both getting off that planet within an inch of their lives.

"We're all feeling a lot, all the time, and going through a lot because we're all new to this. And we're all helping how we can, in different ways. You're not on the sidelines, or at least, you don't have to be. There are other things that need to be done that can't be achieved through tenacious brute force and...whatever we're doing." Fighting. Scrapping. Throwing themselves headlong into the face of death over and over again. For Auteme to be concerned about Ryv was entirely rational. Loske was too, and she'd approached him about it, implored him to open up the field of responsibility. The cluster of Jedi aboard The Renegade were the first steps to that, the declaration of The New Jedi Order was a momentous step forward. One Ryv was responsible for leading, but there were many supporting and being allowed to surround him. They were all just trying their best to navigate these roles. "I don't think we have the luxury of sidelines anymore."

Before she carried on with the upcoming interrogation, she offered something a little more positive to try and reassure her friend. "For what it's worth, there are moments of happiness, Auteme. They're infrequent, yes, but they're earned and they're glorious. Being with everyone, safe, on this ship is one of them."

She'd just heard several barriers of no that the scholar had put in place for herself. She wanted to help but no, she couldn't. She wanted to do something else, and rejection saluted her again.

Not able to give any sort of response that was helpful yet, she sought to dig a little deeper: "How do you want to help?"

 

[Auteme]

Loske Treicolt ​

Auteme felt bad. Loske was trying really hard to console her, to help, to be a good friend... but Auteme just felt choked. Uncomfortable. Sick. She couldn't shake the feeling that of all of the people onboard this ship, she was the least worthy to be there. They were a team. They'd fought together, helped each other, helped others. All while Auteme sat back and watched.

"It doesn't feel all that happy," she said. Still, Loske had a good point. They were safe. That had to count for something, right?

Auteme couldn't answer Loske's question immediately. It was difficult to explain. She wanted to help, but she'd never really thought about how. There was a goal, but no plan. And that was a pretty crucial part, wasn't it? The padawan sighed and took a moment to think. "I just want you guys to be safe," she repeated, now hugging her pillow. Part of her regretted taking part of this 'Jedi' lifestyle, but she knew there was no going back.

Of all the things she knew, this seemed to be the largest blind spot. Auteme thought she knew herself. She'd thought she had control over what she was, how she felt, how she perceived the world, but all of that had crumbled until she was just a scared little girl again. There she was, sitting in the wreckage, waiting for someone to rescue her... but this time no one came. No one could. And she was nothing.

Auteme cleared her throat and shook her head, the words becoming heavy in her throat. "Everything I know... all that studying, I just... I've learned that there isn't much I can do, really. I'll never be smarter than a Columi. I'm no good with the Force or flying or fighting. Whatever I do... everyone around me is better. I'm not enough, Loske. And I don't know how to help. And if I did I don't think I would be able to, anyways." She let out a little gasp as she finished her confession.

She brought her hands up to her head. This sort of pressure... how did everybody else handle it? They had it worse than she did. Auteme got sick at the sight of blood, but the other Jedi had to bathe in it. They had the strength to keep moving afterwards. And when the day's work was done, they prepared for the horrors of the next. Auteme just wanted to do one small thing to help them, but as it was she was paralyzed. Sidelined of her own volition but unable to move onto the field.

"Sorry, I'm rambling," she added, trying to cover up what she'd just said, to little avail. The feeling of inadequacy crushed her. There was nothing she could do.

 

[Loske Treicolt]

"I don't even know what a Columi is." Loske admitted without prompt, hoping that if nothing else, it'd bolster Auteme that the casual mention of some random...species or whatever evidenced how much she did know.

"Remember when we were on Peace, and then we suddenly weren't and you remained calm and knew just what to do with the Phillaks? I probably would have just run ahead, because fighting and flying is all I know. You brought a balance and made the creature calm, which let us advance in and eventually get back to normal.

Neither of us had a plan and you didn't doubt yourself then. You were grounded in what you knew.

We're all advancing at a different pace and there's no room for comparison." She reached to lean across from her seat, and rest a hand on one of the wrists that was strangling the pillow, to try and ease the tension that was rolling off Auteme .

"You're in the Senate now. You represent the Jedi daily –– you can influence more than we can. We're meat for the machine in their eyes, you're helping The Alliance glean a different appreciation for what Jedi can deliver. You can learn so much from history so we don't repeat it.

Honestly, Auteme, I'll speak for myself here, I'm blindly throwing myself into the cause I'm forgetting to check and make sure it's always the right one and we're doing it the right way. I trust that it is, because my friends are doing it, and I can see we're helping, but you can make sure we hold ourselves accountable to our original intentions. You don't need The Force to be strong, that strength has to come from you.

In the end, The Force is a tool. Just like Knowledge. It's the application that makes it something powerful. A weapon or in your case, wisdom."

 

[Auteme]

Loske Treicolt ​

"It's a smart alien with a big brain," she interjected, gesturing to her head as if it'd ballooned several sizes larger. Of course, Columi were so much more than that. Their brains had simply developed far past what any human could have. Even with the best augments and cybernetics, the highest education, it'd take much more to outwit a Columi or have a greater mental capacity.

Still, that wasn't everything. Auteme listened to Loske. When the kiffar touched her, she released a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding in and her grip on her pillow relaxed a little. The bundle of feathers was rather comforting, though, so she held onto it. Equally comforting was the fact that her friend saw her as wise. Chancellor Tagge had told her the same thing. Maybe that was something to be proud of. The padawan ended up smiling weakly as she considered Loske's words.

"Thanks," she managed to get out before the doubt crept back in. And did it ever.

There was still so much she didn't know. Ever since that first class with Master Morga she'd been trying to learn how to see into the future. It hadn't worked, probably because of how desperate she was to see forward. If she could see the future, maybe she could help, but she couldn't. After all, everyone advanced at a different pace, and the one she was moving at left her stranded far behind her friends. "I don't even do anything at the Senate. I just write stuff." Gross oversimplification, but she was far from the New Jedi Order Senate Liaison that some had hoped she'd become.

Disagreement about the nature of the Force aside, Loske was still giving Auteme good advice. She couldn't ignore it. But she couldn't really avoid it either. For a moment she considered it might be a little less than just 'mental' and more biochemical, but she quickly threw that thought away. No, she just needed to work through things.

Somehow.

"I just feel sick Loske. I just..." She shook her head. "Please visit the Temple more. I miss seeing you guys every day. There are great people there but I... when I go into my room I feel so alone." She squeezed the pillow again.

 

[Loske Treicolt]

Auteme was dancing between accepting her role, and berating herself for not being further along. It was difficult to manage from a hype person's perspective. It was a similar attitude Maynard had bore after Brentall. Sometimes people needed to marinate in their emotions, talk them through out loud before inviting solutions to the discourse. Loske had a tendency to jump the gun and get right into the get better! phase. Slow to realize this, she took a mental step back.

"It's okay to feel this way, I think. To acknowledge it, assess it, but move on as soon as you're ready. And we'll help you do that, if you want. However you need.

We're still human after all.

Don't let this upset become you, you have so much light to share."

The request from her friend was simple in itself, and she felt a pang of guilt that she had a tendency to stay aboard The Renegade or keep a distance from the temple all together. Despite being a Jedi, she still felt an apprehension to fully commit to the traditions. The cause was draining enough, without inundating herself with the memories of dogmas and...everything that had happened on Coruscant during her mother's governance.

The blonde forced an uneasy smile, that eventually morphed into something more genuinely agreeable. "I can do that, I'll try really hard to do that.

Do you uh," she leaned back, a small smirk creeping across her lips and she dropped the volume of her voice, as if she were about to whisper a secret to her friend: "Still have holoposters of that Thrawn guy in your room?"

 

[Auteme]

Loske Treicolt ​

Auteme sighed, glancing up at her friend before looking away again. "You're a lot wiser than I am," she whispered. She understood that everyone was going through their own struggles but she couldn't imagine any of the other Jedi being bogged down in something as silly as being away from her friends for a little while. It just wasn't healthy to try and measure up to what everyone else was. As Loske said, Auteme couldn't let this moment consume her. She needed to find her own path, her own light.

Her own story, as much as she wanted to be a part of everyone else's.

"What?" The blonde's question caught Auteme off guard. "They're- they're not posters, they're infographics! And... and they just have some good quotes alright?" Loske's smirk frustrated her. "They're inspirational!" Auteme squeaked. "He was a great man who appreciated art! I shouldn't need to justify why I think he's interesting!"

Auteme took a moment to calm down, then laughed at herself for a moment before looking back to Loske. "Maybe I'll get a new one, throw that up. You can see it when you visit."