In For A Tune-Up (Alna Merrill)

[Jorus Merrill]

DAYARK
KATHOL REPUBLIC
KATHOL OUTBACK

The Daragon had been around the block and then some. As the ageing ship settled down on the Kathol Republic's capital world, though, not a rivet popped. The Pathfinder-class was Alna's design, one of her best, never equaled in its niche. Despite spending a serious chunk of the last decade submerged on Q-27, the Daragon was manifestly in great shape. So what if the outside smelled a bit like seaweed?

Jorus powered down the frigate, the whole thing, from the pilot's seat. A Pathfinder boasted an insane degree of automation. Length, a touch over three hundred sixty metres; minimum crew, two. A woman and her husband, to be precise, or her kid. Along with the Gypsymoth and the Underground attack ship D'Lessio and Chloe Blake's freighter, the Daragon was one of the four ships that Mara had called home at one point or another. Bit of a responsibility, flying a ship with that much baggage. Moving someone's home around with a touch. He felt that responsibility a lot more keenly without the Force, without a safety net.

The Underground still had no answers about the monstrous ship that had attacked a colony on the other side of the Kathol Republic. Fewer still were reliable clues as to how, exactly, the ship or someone aboard had managed to sever Jorus from the Force itself. In the aftermath, remembering lore he'd seen in the holocron of Boolon Murr some years ago, he'd visited Ithorian priests. They had arts, a subtle Force tradition that owed nothing to Jedi lore; they could heal Force-severing sometimes. The priests had been unable to help.

In the end, it had been Mara who'd offered a potential solution. Pushed it on him, even, when he'd found himself loving life without the Force. She'd convinced him, reminded him, that he relied on his astrogation abilities to keep his people and his family as safe as he could manage. A Master of the Force herself, in her way, she'd had some insights about what he was likely to face the longer he was severed. Force-severing was within her skillset, well within; it had never been in his, and so accepting his young daughter's expert opinion made sense.

He rubbed at his eye sockets with the heel of his one flesh-and-blood palm. Four times now he'd had the eyes replaced - three kinds of prosthetics, plaeryin bols. Currently they were NeuroSaav, best he'd ever had, but the sockets still ached.

The last lights of the cockpit dimmed to landing-ready: just enough power to operate basic hatches, lights, 'freshers, turbolifts. Jorus unstrapped and stood, stretching his neck. "Shall we?"

[member="Alna Merrill"]

 

[Alndys]

Alna, who had been somewhere between dozing and perhaps a sort of absent meditation, yawned and replied with a nod at her husband's urging. Her spacer days were nearly a decade behind her but far from forgotten; every hum and click of the Daragon's cooling hull was familiar to her, an expected thing. A million different reports that everything was operating within tolerances. It was a fine ship, all things said, and Alna knew that modesty wouldn't change that fact. The Arcadia had been one of the first warships of its generation, a singular and unique force, but the Pathfinder was bolt-for-bulkhead a finer vessel, even with its lack of armament. Or in Alna's opinion, because of it.

That didn't make the trip into the middle of the Kathol outback any less boring. When they'd sent Mara here for training, she'd built a lightsaber out of detritus and garbage to stave off that boredom, and Alna couldn't really blame her. Dayark was almost literally in the middle of nowhere, and she'd spent the first leg of the trip burning through her reading and the second alternating between bouncing ideas off of Jorus or sleeping. Arrival was a welcome thing.

Stretching her back out, Alna stifled another yawn and put a hand on Jorus' shoulder. "Barely felt a thing." It was honest praise, the sort she'd been trying to keep up on. Without his instinctive grasp of space and distances, Jorus was still one of the finer pilots she'd ever met and he aught to know that.

Alna's good cheer soured slightly as they disembarked. Dayark was a very wet planet, it was nearly always raining in some form. Good weather for rice, less so for middle-aged women with frizzy hair. Alndys could feel her hair responding to ultimate humidity. Well, it wasn't as though she hadn't been warned. She produced an umbrella and went down into one of the more startlingly empty starports she'd ever visited, glancing around curiously at what other ships were present.

Lots of exploration vessels, likely using Dayark as a staging point for deep-space surveying. Nice. "I don't know how Beyrr could stand this place." Alna joked, offering [member="Jorus Merrill"] a crooked grin. "He must've been a puffball within three steps."

The idea of the formidable Wookie all fluffed out like a dutiful dandelion made her grin.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Alna Merrill"]

"He said something about growing moss, and I don't think it was metaphorical. Near as I can recall, he spent most of the time on the ship. Checked in on her when he felt like he should, but Aleidis kept her busy, thank every god."

Or she could have ended up shockboxing with her cousin on a permanent basis.

"What a gorram desolate place this is. The Outback isn't known for bustling ports, and this is the biggest port for days. Sleepy is the word."

The umbrella wasn't quite large enough for two, so he walked alongside her, rain spattering his shoulder.

"Of all the backwaters in the verse, Aleidis picked this one. Tatooine, Dagobah, Ahch-To, Dayark: am I the only retired Jedi Master who picked a halfway pleasant planet?"

 

[Alndys]

"It took, what, a month to get out here?" Alna observed dryly. "In a Pathfinder?" Her tone was about the only thing that survived being dry after ten steps on this planet. It wasn't even that it was raining especially hard - though it could, and absolutely did - the drizzle was just so damned PERVASIVE. It seemed to be coming from every single direction, the bastard child of rain and fog. "If she wanted to get gone, I don't think there're many better options than here."

Alna gave her husband a sidelong smirk as they left the starport and went into what passed for a city in Dayark - a singular enough occurrence that the city itself was ALSO called Dayark, though the locals knew it more as 'the city'. "Besides. You got a good head on your shoulders, and me pointing that head in the right directions." She boasted, moving the umbrella over so they were both half-covered. "Jedi usually ain't so lucky, as I recall."

Celibacy and loneliness was no way to live, as far as Alna was concerned - and she'd always been more than happy in her own company. But people, her father liked to ramble, were made to go in pairs. There was no such thing as a perfect person, which is why they went looking for the one who balanced them out.

Alna leaned into Jorus' side, hearing the faint 'squish' of their jackets pressing together. She imagined she'd have to get used to that sound. "You sure you've got the coordinates right?" She asked curiously. "These houses are looking... fancy, but not as fancy as I'd thought."

After what she and Jorus had given the girl, she likely could have bought the whole planet. Unlike Q27, out hid only great wealths of rain and rice. But lo ava behind, Alna spotted a familiar young woman waving out the door of a large, mostly glass house - yelling something apologetic that Alna couldn't make out.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Alna Merrill"]

"You've got a distinct point. How many Jedi Masters are lucky enough to retire with someone else at all, let alone someone sensible?" A squint and a thought adjusted the overlay mode of his eyes, then tweaked spectral filtering to cut through the rain. Distant houses sharpened.

Alna leaned against him, and he wrapped one arm around her shoulders for a quick side hug. He was careful about it though, had to be: his hand was metal now. "Yeah, now that you mention it, Mara's description made it sound bigger than these. Then again, she wasn't that big herself at the time."

His eyes clicked onto another mode. He waved down the road at the young woman in the glass house. "Oh, there she is. Yeah, bigger than the rest of these but not by much. Easier to clean and still keep private, I guess."

 

[Aleidis Zrgaat]

Aleidis had been expecting the Merrills, roughly five minutes from now. Her datapad had chirped to let her know of their arrival earlier than expected, it was all she could do to finish getting ready and presentable in a hurry. Aleidis had only met Alna a couple of times, and Jorus a couple more than that, but overall the young woman had a very high opinion of both Merrills. That wouldn't surprise anyone with a passing knowledge of the three of them.

"I wanted to meet you at the starport!" She complained good-naturedly, bustling down to intercept the couple. "Missus Merrill, you look wonderful." The Ghostling promised, bowing slightly.

Alna smiled politely. As much as she WANTED to like the respectful young woman, something about her had always left a bad taste in her mouth. She couldn't put her finger on it, though. "I wouldn't have thought this weather would agree with anyone, but it seems it's doing you well." She replied.

Aleidis gestured flippantly to one side, smirking. "I cheat." She confessed. "Jorus, it's great to see you again! Nice eyes. Why don't you two come in out of your rain? I've got coffee on." The Ghostling practically pranced her way back up into her stylish, modern house, which had been meticulously cleaned for just this visit, talking as she went. "Codi's actually on the other side of the planet for the next couple days, on business, but she sends her best wishes." Alei added absebtly, ducking around a fern that perhaps should have been relocated to the huge garden out back, into a small and well-loved kitchen. "I hope the trip wasn't too much for you?"

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Aleidis Zrgaat"]

Long years of marriage let Jorus read his wife tolerably well. She was Lorrdian, so she probably knew, and let him read her, and made sure she did so in ways that nobody else could read -- and all of it as easy as breathing. Wasn't something they talked about; more like a tacit shared joke. Point was, unless the one-armed Ghostling actually tried to get a read on Alna, she might not be aware that she'd set his wife subtly on edge. As to why Alna was getting that vibe from the Barsen'thor, that was something else entirely, and Jorus wasn't prepared to speculate.

He slung his damp coat on a hook by the door and kicked off his muddy boots. "Nah, the trip was fine, thanks. The ship's got a point-five, so it coulda been worse." He maneuvered around the monster fern. Inside, the glass house had a sort of magic to it. Even the drizzle made for crystalline rivulets on the glass. He felt drier just looking at it.

"So Mara said you might be able to help me with...my thing." He gestured up and down at himself with his cybernetic hand as they stepped into a larger room. "Ran into this nasty ship clear on the other side of the Kathol Republic, out in the boondock colonies, and-" He snapped his fingers with a ring of metal on metal. "-couldn't feel or touch the Force anymore. Permanent, near as I could tell. Even the Ithorian priests couldn't help, and they can heal severing some of the time. But you were trained by an Ithorian priest, plus you were Olra'en's apprentice. You got something special?"

 

[Aleidis Zrgaat]

Aleidis nodded slightly, busily pouring three cups of relatively mild coffee. It gave her a moment to think, and in situations like these, those few moments could be quite critical. "It sounds very serious." She commented, and it was easy to see that Aleidis had spent nearly most of her training in various hospitals - the ambiguously supportive tone of a doctor, filled with a compassion that promised nothing, came quite naturally to her.

Somewhere in the ceiling, a machine clicked quietly and began efficiently pulling moisture out of the air as Aleidis sat down across from the Merrills.

"I'll certainly do everything I can." She promised. "Though if the Ithorian priests didn't have any luck, I honestly doubt I will." Aleidis again offered the kind of gentle smile usually reserved for a terminal patient in for a fourth second opinion. "...It's terribly easy to destroy something delicate, often impossible to put it back together, as I'm sure you know."

Alna directly drummed her fingers on the table, her coffee untouched. A born saleswoman, of a sort, and the mother of what had once been a VERY evasive, creative teenager, she knew prevarication when she heard it. Her posture calmly stated that she was willing to wait all day for Aleidis to get to the point.

"...There is another option." Aleidis admitted reluctantly. For once, she even looked away - as though uncomfortable. It was a new thing for her. "Ordinarily, I would never suggest it. But for you, Jorus?" The Ghostling hesitated, her fingers brushing against the orange jewel she wore around her neck.

"If I cannot fix what's been broken, but it IS within my power to... place you into a new receptacle. A new body that isn't severed." She explained quietly, her hushed tone adding a sort of nervous weight to her words. "It wouldn't be murder, engineering a mindless clone body is simple enough with Silk's resources. But it'd be dangerous - and one-way."

Aleidis glanced between the two Merrills. "You two gave me my life back, and then some." She explained quietly. "It's not a promise, but I do owe you enough to try."

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Aleidis Zrgaat"]

His first instinct was revulsion. Being placed in another body -- empty or not -- ranked among the skills most likely to be associated with the Dark Side, right up there with lightning and hyperspace rifts. The holocrons were very clear, and he'd studied all of them.

But they'd also taught him to look at any given situation dispassionately, logically. Jedi could make lightning and bend hyperspace without the Dark Side. And he could think of times when Jedi had taken new bodies, or been placed in them, without the Dark Side being involved. Cray Mingla placing Nikkos Tyris in an advanced mechanical form, or Callista Masana inhabiting first the Eye of Palpatine and then Mingla's own body by consent. The records were incomplete -- he was relying mainly on a story that Tionne Solusar had told in her holocron. But still, those two precedents were enough that he could feel at least moderately comfortable examining the option on its own ethical merits.

Who would benefit? Him, and Alna. They were both into middle age by now, her more than him. Half their lives gone, maybe more. And he'd had his cybernetic eyes replaced so many times, and his hand, and he'd lost the Force with all its power to help and protect.

Who would be harmed? Maybe Mara -- having her parents become much younger, her age, wouldn't be easy for her. Maybe the Jedi who would disapprove, and there would be many: maybe they'd have spiritual issues due to being pissy. If so, that was their problem. But real harm, real ethical problems? He couldn't see much. You could maybe frame it as blasphemy against the Force, but the Force was remarkably ambiguous sometimes, and didn't much seem to care about blasphemy. He'd spoken, debated, with the dead woman who held the mantle of Confusion at the planet of the Five. He'd learned things about the flow and rhythm of the Force, the cosmic Force becoming life-energy and back again. What real harm was there in a delay? "Twilight is upon me," Yoda had said, "and soon night must fall. That is the way of the Force." But Yoda had been nine centuries old, his life prolonged by his studies in the Force much as many other Jedi lived to be ancient.

"What do you think?" Jorus said to Alna. She'd always had a keen insight into things like this. She tended to approach ethical dilemmas with incisive precision, like a blade through a Gordian knot. She'd see more clearly.

 

[Alndys]

Alna, much like her husband, had to take a few moments to turn the idea over in her head. Was it strange? Oh, yes, very much so. Had she been expecting to have to grapple with hard choices when they'd planned this trip? Yes, but not like this. Alna's mind might be a singularly efficient machine, but even she had to stop and consider what that were doing.

Who wouldn't want to be young and hale again? Alna wasn't that old, but she was getting old enough to feel a lifetime of hard work. Old enough to feel a little wound down, or sore over things that'd had no business making her sore. She pursed her lips, narrowed her eyes, and gave Aleidis a piercing look. "Side effects?"

Aleidis didn't look terribly comfortable under that stare, though she wasn't hiding anything. She briefly considered if Mara's willful nature was something of a defense against that stare. "I expect a few months of clumsiness as you acclimate, not unlike what someone might experience with..." Alei hesitated slightly. "...A prosthetic. There might be some very mild personality changes, but they're largely chemical. I very keenly recall Je'gan's exuberance when I lent him my own body for awhile."

Alna tried not to look repulsed at the thought. She largely succeeded.

Issue was, Alna liked who she was - and growing old with Jorus was something she'd been rather looking forward to when they'd married. If it weren't for his constantly-irritating prosthetics - which seemed to bother him more and more every year in a hundred little ways she saw but didn't think he even noticed - and the vague, metaphysical threat that was his Force severance, she wouldn't even consider it. But those were the realities of the situation. As Alna understood it, the 'till death do we part' portion of their vows was getting expedited by his health issues... and growing old lost a great deal of its allure without him there.

And if Alna was to be honest with herself, her own apparent inability to convince a child weighed heavily as well. She loved Mara with all her heart, but she wouldn't mind another. Until five minutes ago, though, it seemed like the only way to make that possible was infidelity.

The Lorrdian took a small breath to center herself. "I think we should do it." She decided. What was she leaving behind? A handful of brothers she didn't like terribly much, and a handfull of aches and pains. She was keeping Jorus - for many more years - and Mara, as well. Though she'd prefer to get her daughter's take on all this.

"I insist that you take a couple days AT LEAST before making a hard decision." Aleidis less insisted than pleaded. "Talk to each other, and let your thoughts... marinate, you know?" The Ghostling offered an uncomfortable smile, wrapping her fingers around her untouched coffee mug. "I've already made up the guest room, but there's a really nice hotel nearby, if you prefer."

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Alna Merrill"]

Jorus blinked. "Yeah?"

A thought crystallized: how much he looked down on people who rejected life-saving medical treatments for personal or religious reasons. The Jedi had their share of idiots who put Force healing on a pedestal instead of its proper place: the context of modern medicine. He couldn't avoid a parallel. Two of them, in fact. For one, if he rejected means that were outside his comfort zone, for no other reason than desire to avoid being associated with an unpopular idea, he was no better than them. For another thing, he'd tried medicine and a broad spectrum of Force healing. That was the context for this option, and together they made a coherent and comprehensive whole.

"We'll think it over. Thanks for the offer, but the hotel oughta work." He wasn't much for staying over at other people's houses, invited guest or not. Besides, Alna the Lorrdian was keenly conscious of privacy or lack thereof, and one wanted to be as much at ease as possible for a talk like this. Any number of things needed to be discussed, big things with serious implications. Whether to keep their names, for example. Whether to still be them when they came back.

He managed a laugh. "At least we'd have an explanation of sorts. Went too far into Wild Space looking for a cure, stumbled on an esoteric Force Master, wound up presented with a solution we didn't expect. When you frame it like that, it's downright respectable."

 

[Alndys]

Aleidis offered a small smile and nodded. "That's a nice way to frame it." She agreed earnestly. Especially since it didn't really trace back to her, which was something important to her. Not that Aleidis thought that the Merrills would name her complicit in their rebirth, but the last thing she needed was folk breaking down her door trying to buy or beat immortality out of her. This was very much a one-time thing; If Jorus wasn't who he was and the Merrills hadn't given her what they did, she wouldn't even consider putting this option on the table.

The rest of the morning passed with simple conversation and a few suggestions from the Ghostling on options and things to consider, the bulk of which had already occured to the couple. Alna was fairly eager to retire to the relative privacy of a nice hotel room and weigh her options with her husband. As she set her bag down, Alna turned her callused hands over and reflected on the inherent weirdness of the thought that they might not be her hands forever, that she was going to custom-tailor a new pair with Jorus' input.

It was a little hard to wrap her head around.

Peeling her jacket off, Alndys gave her husband a wan smile and was momentarily thankful for the incredible efficiency of the dehumidifiers seemingly everywhere on this soggy, sleepy little backwater. "Guess we have a lot to talk over." She stated needlessly, keenly aware that saying things that didn't need be said was very much not her style. Jorus would doubtlessly pick up on that, and make of it what he would.

With a sigh, she sat down on the bed and let her hands hang between her thighs. "I almost want to conference Mara in on this, but I'm a little afraid of how she'd take it." The former salvager admitted, shoulders slumping. Mara, much like her father, had always fiercely fought for what she saw as The Way Things Should Be. While her daughter's mind wasn't an open book to her like it'd used to be - especially when it came to The Force - she wouldn't doubt that Mara would have some issues with the whole thing.

"What do you think?" Alna finally asked, reaching for Jorus out of habit. "About... all of this. Anything."

 

[Jorus Merrill]

Were it just him, he decided, he'd have said no. If Alna wasn't suddenly at stake -- her remaining life, her health, the help and protection he could provide with the Force -- he'd have stayed with the status quo. But what half-decent husband wouldn't go to any length to add fifty good years to his partner's life, if he had the opportunity?

What half-decent husband wouldn't at least try to make up for the decade he'd spent on the run, a serial dilettante, tossed every which way by new ideas and inspiring causes?

He chewed on that as he took a seat on the edge of the desk and took her offered hand. "I owe you about ten years I spent doing fifty things at once. Been mulling the whole thing over, too, and near as I can figure, it's about taboos for me. Folks turning down better treatments for banthacrap reasons -- for their feelings. Taking a new body is pretty much the biggest Jedi taboo there is. Not that I'm doubting she can pull it off without the Dark Side, without hurting anyone or whatever -- but if so, she's an edge case. That taboo's there for a reason. Heck, look at Rave and her history, her as a kid, and how hard she hated the whole idea. She knew how to body-trade, known since she was five or so."

He grimaced. "But that was about selfishness, and fear of death, and exploitation. And so far as I can tell, only ones we'd be screwing over is us, a little bit. We're in for years of 'what happened?' and 'how could you?' and 'so what's it like having pimples again?' and 'no true Jedi...'" He shook his head and rubbed the bridge of his nose between the thumb and forefinger of his droid hand.

"I don't want to have selfish things at the forefront of my mind when I decide whether or not to break a taboo like that. I mean, we've both been on all kinds of first contact missions, we know what taboos to break and what not to, usually...

"...and it's the 'usually' that kills me. This is about as ethically ambiguous as anything. Might be totally wrong, might be totally fine. My conscience tells me it's good for me to worry and ponder it, but beyond that, nothing. That's one reason I turned to you."

 

[Alndys]

Alndys chuckled dryly, shaking her head. "You don't 'owe me,' Jorus." She promised quietly, squeezing his hand. "You act like I don't know who I married." Were the years he'd spent crusading less fun than the times she had him all too herself? Sure, but Jorus was a bird of prey, he couldn't stand to live in a cage. Even one he'd chosen - and she was much the same, in her own fashion. That was why they'd given up Silk Holdings. She knew he'd always come home to her, and that was what mattered.

She squeezed his hand, glad she'd gotten the real one. Thankful that he remembered little things like that. He'd touch her with that droid hand like she was made out of glass, but Jorus had no issue rubbing his eyes with it. It was sweet, in a way. A quiet mark of concern or regard, the wordless little shows of respect that she ate up. Would all of those habits survive this? How many little things about her would fade away in a new body? His hundreds of scars were as known to her as the curves of her own body, the sounds he made when he slept, the swirl in his hair that she liked to trace with her fingernails... was there a way to preserve the thousand and one things she adored about him?

"I'm No True Jedi, Jorus." Alna reminded him with a smirk. "And if we're being perfectly honest, neither are you. I know THAT one for fact." Her slightly salacious tone, Alna hoped, would add a little much-needed levity. She was his wife, they had a daughter, no true Jedi indeed. "Honestly, I've never really had the patience for all the... metaphysical things the Force entails. It's big to you and Mara, but I just can't wrap my head around it."

"But I do know that we've kind of made a life out of going by the beat of our own drum." Alna pointed out warmly, her voice quiet. "We met pretty late in life. And you keep collecting prosthetics, and they keep bothering you more and more. I don't know about moral issues, that's more your field, but... heck." She sat up straight and chuckled nervously, brushing her frizzy hair back like she always had. "This whole business makes me nervous as hell, but I can't think of a good reason NOT to. Maybe that's why I'm nervous?"

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Alna Merrill"]

He snapped metal fingers. "That. Right there. You've put your finger on it. That's where the anxiety comes in: I feel like I should be able to think of a really good reason not to do it, and I can't. Cognitive dissonance makes fools of us all."

She had a good point about the metaphysical side of the Force, the spiritual side. It just didn't translate easily into the real world. Even concrete applications like the Jedi Code didn't always line up with reality. There was no line for this situation. On a more grounded level, though, compassion was supposed to be central to a Jedi's life. Doing what was best for others, regardless of your misgivings or how much you might be inconvenienced.

He chuckled, dropped her hand, and walked over to the mini-kitchen for a glass of water. "I think I just caught myself trying to frame all this in 'I'm-a-martyr' terms for justification purposes." One glass filled, he pulled out another. "You want any?"

With a long sip, he settled against the counter. "It's sort of gauche in Jedi circles to do anything for yourself, for your own happiness or convenience, especially if it involves the Force. Not as big a taboo as body-swapping, and don't tell the Jedi billionaires in Silver space or the Alliance. But still. And yet I'm not really a Jedi without the Force; I'm not bound by the Code unless I decide I am. I'm afraid of making the wrong decision, and making it for the wrong reason. Might even be afraid of making the right decision for the wrong reason."

 

[Alndys]

"Gauche." Alna echoed with a dry smirk, standing from the bed. A small motion of her hand indicated that she wasn't thirsty. "I think if I ever let something being 'gauche' stop me from doing it, my dad's ghost would materialize to clout me upside the head." Arms above her head, Alna stretched languidly, feeling all the familiar cracks and pops, along with the well-used muscles coiling up like a well-serviced hyperdrive. This business had made her keenly aware of all those little features and traits, it seemed, and she was already pretty aware of her body as it was. Being Lorrdian tended to do that.

She let her hands rest on her hips, turning to face Jorus with slightly more confidence than she had before. "Honey, I've been dead to the galaxy for years, now. You're the one with a legacy... Or a track record, if you prefer." Alna pointed out. "As much as I'd love another however many years with you, you're walking away from a lot more than I am."

A couple of steps carried her over to Jorus, where Alna helped herself to a sip of his water before continuing a vague tour of the hotel room to keep her legs moving. It was easier to think that way, when she was doing something. "And please take this as gently as possible, Jorus, but since when do the Jedi have any idea how to live well?" Alna questioned. "They're as messed up as anyone else, but with magical powers, last I checked. Jedi reasons and Jedi traditions haven't ever held water with me, you know that."

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Alna Merrill"]

Cybernetic eyes, it turned out, were real good for tracking humanoid movement, and she was giving him a lot of movement to track. Be it ever so subtle, she really knew how to walk. He drained half his glass and set it aside.

"Can't argue with any of that," he said. "And that's really what it comes down to, yeah. When 'it would be gauche' is the best argument for not extending your life by half a century, you know you're in idiot territory. And yeah, same goes for a good chunk of Jedi traditionalism. Don't even get me started on the Ruusan Reformations."

He set the glass aside. The hotel room was a single L-shaped empty space around the bed. At the end, a slatted window looked out on rain and little else. The dehumidifier chuffed pleasantly.

"Outer Rim Code." He'd compiled it, hadn't written it per se, but he still didn't like to quote it too often about personal stuff. Didn't want to be the guy who ran around quoting himself. "Never lose your sense of proportion for a cause.' Seems to me I'd be losing sight of what's important if I didn't a swing at this in some sense. No, it's all or nothing, isn't it, come to think of it. Yes/no, black/white. We let Aleidis put us in new bodies, or we don't." A shallow breath. "Priorities."

 

[Alndys]

Even though her husband was a man who frequently lost himself in causes and ideals, Alna was still slightly surprised at how quickly the Galaxy's biggest serial rebel would leap from one moral ruleset to the next at times. She smirked and closed the blinds slightly, letting what little light managed to brave the rain filter in at an angle away from the bed. Not that, Alna realized, many voyeurs would likely be creeping around Dayark to watch a middle-aged couple agonize over a hard choice.

"I think we're just spinning in place, here." Alna confessed. They were circling what ultimately felt like a decision to go through with the procedure, and after a certain point, turning an idea over in your head was less good caution and more a habit of fear - not that this was a matter they'd ever take lightly. That should ever be taken lightly.

Alna cleared her throat quietly. "...And not for nothing, Jorus, but given our difficulties conceiving..." She brought up softly. It was less an 'Our' problem and more a 'Her' problem, as far as Alna was concerned - Mara was living proof that Jorus wasn't the issue at work. Another child was something Alna had wanted badly after they'd married and settled down on Q27, but when it became apparent over time that wanting a thing wouldn't make it happen, Alna had quietly let it drift away. She was from a large family, she'd always wanted to have one of her own.

"I'd be lying if I didn't admit that that is a consideration in my corner, that's all." Alna clarified plainly, leaning back against the window frame. She smirked dryly, folding her arms under her breasts. "Unless you'd prefer to be the 'missus' this time?" Alna teased.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Alna Merrill"]

"Unless I -- oh. Sorry, took me a sec. Fair point about the, uh, fertility thing." He blinked rapidly, caught between 'this could mean my wife could have a kid of her own' and 'did she just suggest that my next body be female?' He kept blinking until things sort of processed.

"No, think I'm happy as a guy." He paused, tilted his head, then grimaced. "Yeah, I think I'll stick with what I've got. And yeah, I'm saying 'will' instead of 'would' on purpose. I'm sold, you're right...let's do this."

He weighed the last words on his tongue, trying to be sure if he'd said it with a proper idea of what it entailed. But there was no way to know, was there. Not really. Rave could have answered a question or two about what it would be like. She'd never body-traded herself, but she'd been a vessel for someone who had, and she'd retained a lot of that person's memories. But Rave was entirely gone, burned out, used up, dead and faded into the Force with finality. Not a trace of her spirit and identity remained, so far as he was aware. She was space and matter and energy now, filtered back into the cosmic Force by the Planet of the Five.

That wasn't really part of Jedi doctrine, but it was real all the same: he'd been there. Just one more way in which Jedi principles, all man-made principles, scrabbled for glimmery bits of actual truth. Taboos could fit in there, the idea that a thing was forbidden because it had always been forbidden, armored by simple ex post facto justifications like 'clearly it's blasphemy.'

"Yeah," he said quietly, sitting on the bed beside her. He rubbed at his stump where the skeletal prosthetic connected. "Yeah, let's do it."

 

[Alndys]

Alna couldn't help but smirk at his reaction, it wasn't unlike an engine throwing a segfault and stalling out. Jokes aside, she was quite firmly straight - much to the ire of some amorous plant women. Alna joined Jorus back on the bed, pulling out the overworked elastic band that kept her hair relatively tamed.

And then she put her arm around him, hand over his, squeezing that part of his shoulder he was almost sullenly worrying over. "Then we'll worry about the details tomorrow." Alna decided gently. Even if the issue was as set in concrete as it could be, they could both use a little time to let that concrete settle. "After we call Mara, of course." To proceed without filling their daughter in and hearing her take would be almost as foolish as it was heartless - especially if they wound up her age.

Rather than let Jorus worry over the topic and his prosthetics endlessly, Alna aimed to interrupt his train of thought before mulling became brooding. She smoothly slid astride his lap and pushed Jorus' shoulders back to the mattress, looming above him with a secret, verbose smile. "We're going to take the rest of the day to celebrate all the things we're trading in." Alndys instructed, her voice low and soft. "Then we'll handle business tomorrow... And keep celebrating."

Her lips found his, first, what would become his evening stubble scratching her skin. Her own hair was an inescapable aura that draped over them. They next found the joint of his shoulder, where metal met flesh, where his thoughts so often lay of late. Jorus had always carried his tension in his shoulders, they were the best barometer of his mood.

They could handle tomorrow when it got here. She was saving the rest of today's thoughts for her husband.