Private I Was Wrong

[Iris Arani]

"I dunno. I've gotten pretty good." She gave a brief smile as he set his hand on her shoulder. For a moment she just watched him, still leaned back on the couch. The smugness of her expression faded as she scanned over his face.

"Your face is all rough now. But the smile still looks warm. That's what I miss most about having you around. Seein' you smile."

Corin Trenor

 

[Corin Trenor]

Sullen eyes met the floor with the remnants of a short-lived smile, more akin to the soft upturn in the corner of his mouth. The smile never made it much further than that, a hard strike in the return to reality ensured as much. He could not claim she lied, in truth, all too aware of the weathered features his face often bore - scratches and scrapes, cuts and slices, bruises with bandages. The fresh-faced youth, so rebelliously brazen in the Jedi Temple as much as the Prosperity, was traded out for someone hardened by a million and more factors. The lot of them, one class and clan. It saddened Corin to think on how he cleaved all contact in two, to be unburdened by the responsibilities of the Jedi, to focus on what remained on Denon; a disease infested nest of crime, with murders abound and arms flooded into the streets as much as the flow of spice. How could one turn away, the Red Mask so often pondered, if not excused.

It was an excuse, was it not? One as good as any, but cut from the same cloth nonetheless.

His small smile returned once Corin looked back to Iris with a deafening silence. "I missed seeing you smile, too." He said frankly, softly, while his arm slid from her shoulder to her arm.

Iris Arani

 

[Iris Arani]

A lot was said without any words, but for once Iris wasn't watching them. The colors that'd say how he felt, gave her insight to what he might be thinking, she didn't want to see that. She was focused on him, on his features. The new marks, some of the older ones healed but not faded. Even without being involved with the wars he'd been getting hurt again and again. It was almost like they covered who he was before, it's own mask.

One he seemed to break when he smiled. She leaned up, her marred hand touching his cheek. Broken, cracked skin from the disruptor that had claimed part of it.

"Good."

Corin Trenor

 

[Corin Trenor]

He did not mind it, Corin never seemed to mind it. Of all that there was out there, it was of no true concern.

It touched his face, brushed across flesh and the white patch of fabric that settled over the cheekbone under the left, blue eye. Pools of the ocean, in that there were flecks and splotches of green in them, some so dark they neared an almost amber brown. Those were his eyes, few remembered them well and even less saw them of late. But Corin remember hers, in their Keshian size with violet colour. Pure, in a sense. His own hand, larger than hers by no small margin, touched at her face in some similar fashion.

Wordlessly, Corin moved forwards to let place his lips upon hers. The drunkenness or not, he did not think to question it. Right or wrong, it was of such little consequence to him now.

Iris Arani

 

[Iris Arani]

For a moment, nothing else mattered. Not the stress of everything that had happened. No senate, no crime on Denon. No pain. Just Corin. It was new to actually look at him. Not the colors, the scars. The depth of color in his eyes. There was a fascination there she didn't expect to have. Her own eyes were different enough from the usual human in the Temple. But when had she ever bothered to look at someone else's?

She was going to paint this later. These colors. These real colors.

Corin leaned down, and she didn't hesitate to lean up and meet him. Let her hand lace into his hair, pulled him closer. Back down towards the couch. Drunk, buzzed, didn't matter. Nothing mattered but this. Him.

Corin Trenor

 

[Corin Trenor]

A burning sensation. It rose in his throat, caught there. The press of lips subsided with one pulling away from the other. He regarded Iris with a smile tinged through with a sadness, slight and sombre in the ghost of a look that it was. Was it regret, Corin half-wondered in some bout of paranoia, or some mere apologetic sense of self that reached out to remind him of his own goals and the barrier that stood between the two. Corin had seen his share of relationships between the Jedi, it all went well until it did not. Fell apart, shattered and ruined. Corin hardly considered himself much of a Jedi though, he failed to rationalise. He knew himself well enough.

"Sorry," his voice, low and dry said.

Iris Arani

 

[Iris Arani]

".. Y'know, if every kiss I have ends with a sorry, I'm gonna start thinking there's something wrong with me." Two for two, thus far. Though now was a different kind, if she had to hazard a guess. And a peep towards the colors helped figure there was something different going on. She frowned, just for a moment, before laying out on the couch. Staring up off at the ceiling.

"You can talk to me. If you want to. Though you got those new friends who'd probably get it better, right?"

Corin Trenor

 

[Corin Trenor]

"It's... not you," Corin half-laughed while fingers scratched at the nape of his neck, an uncertainty hinted in his voice. "I just don't know if it was the right thing to do, for you. I'm here on Denon, that's where I'll stay." His arms folded over one another, as if to act as a shield for whatever else may lurk out there in the unknown that circulated the vigilante. "I don't want you to think that will change because of... that."

Denon was his home, his mission. It was bound to him like any other sworn duty, even if self-sworn and tied to himself by his own rope. The knot was there to be untied whenever Corin saw fit, the same as scissors to cut it off, a sword to leave, a blaster to burn it. It was all there, the second he did not want it. Though Corin warned himself as much, and yet never once took it - not on the darkest days, when the cybernetic fuelled junkies clambered out of the scrap heaps and left him with broken bones, burns and incisions. Or the corporatists death squads that hunted him throughout the knight, their aim as true as ever. It only took one, they told him. It took three. There were better lives lead, one with Iris too, and maybe all that youthful bickering amounted to this for a good enough reason, but the star-hopping days were done for Corin. He was here and settled, no matter how unsettling it sometimes was.

He sat down on the couch, half-off as Iris lay across it. "They're old friends," he excused with a dismissive wave of his hand, "I knew them when I was younger. I left them behind when I went off to," his voice fell quiet, as if unable to utter the words, "You know."

He never held a fond relationship with the Jedi now, not these days. It was a well enough disguise for a vigilante, even if disguise was not the right word. It was a title, though rarely used as it should. He wore the lightsaber on his hip in an official capacity, to enter places his vigilante-self may not be so welcome in. Other than that, the hum of his blade was lost on him. He wondered what Dagon would think, what any of his old Jedi classmates would think, if they ever thought about him at all. "I doubt they'd get it anyways. It's a different life out there, on here, I'm the only one that's done both."

Iris Arani

 

[Iris Arani]

Well, he was actually talking for once. Even if it was a lot of 'you know.' She did. So she listened. Sat up about half way before just reach up to touch his cheeks. Keep his gaze on hers. "Things won't change. I can hope they will, one day, but I'm not.. I don't want to change you. Maybe get you to clean up better cause c'mon, you're living in a mess. Maybe show you there's still y'know, hope that things can get better here. But.. I'm not here to bring you back."

She let her hands fall as she just flopped back again. Arms over her head as she stared out towards one of the piles of pizza boxes that littered his place. "I'm leaving Denon. Not for good or like, I won't come back. But I can't focus here, on the wars, on my Padawan, being a Shadow. .. There's too much. Tell me it's in good hands with you here. Tell me when I do come back again I won't find you half dead or just dead. That even with the shitshow of the Senate you can protect this place as Red and Corin." Iris sat up again, a frown on her lips this time. She wasn't supposed to be thinking, but here she was, thinking anyway. She brought her knees to her chest, staring at that one pile of boxes like it held all the answers.

"I really don't think I could handle coming back to see you dead. So don't die, okay?"

Corin Trenor

 

[Corin Trenor]

He wondered whether it could ever be promised, in truth or in earnest. It was a world full of dangers, the same to be said for the countless others that spanned across the stars. There was nowhere safe, not in entirety. Some worse than others, and Denon among those few. Even in the heart of Galactic Alliance space, there was a world fraught with dangers, with Corin determined to tackle them all. In the lowest of the slums and the highest of skyscrapers, gliding across the clouds, peering above the storms. No, Corin could not promise it, though he could lie.

With a faint tug on the corner of his mouth, Corin spoke with a whispering breath, "I promise," the vigilante croaked, "I'll be here, fixing things. I'm harder to kill than people think anyways."

Iris Arani

 

[Iris Arani]

"Thanks. .. Good." Well, something along those lines anyway. She wasn't too sure what to say in response, after everything else she did. Iris sorta just flopped over to rest her cheek against his shoulder.

"You really got bulkier."

Corin Trenor