Private Legacies

[Tydeus of Tion]

"Impressive."

Tydeus set down his boxed up food down on a roller box of tools that looked suspiciously like an old Imperial TIE fighter maintainer set. Eyes adjusting to the low light, Tydeus walked around the orderly set of mats, sensors, and training equipment with a gaze that seemed to absorb every detail, process it, and formulate a judgment in the space of a heartbeat.

The weight on him at the smokehouse bled away. There was still a predatory hunch to his shoulders, as of a cornered wolf, but gone was any sense of doubt or anxiety. He was on familiar ground here and he stepped with sure feet. Eagerness overlayed exhaustion on his features.

"Did you build this all out yourself?" The boy grunted and approached the sensors, "An Arkanian biorhythm monitor." He tapped it with a finger, "Hard to find these days, but nothing better."

Tydeus reached up and started pulling off his poncho, to reveal what lay beneath: a soft armor-weave body armor vest, with a vibroknife sheathed horizontally in molle webbing on the front, multiple pistol powerpacks stuffed into pockets along the sides, and a compact blaster pistol holstered on the front. A lightsaber hung from a clip on the armorweave, so that it would be hidden beneath the poncho. The boy shrugged out of the armor and set it neatly to the side, out of the way and on top of the poncho, leaving him in a simple compression shirt of black the loose pants. He rolled his head around, causing his neck to pop, and shook out his arms.

"These mats see much use?" he jerked a chin at the training mats, curious.

Tansu Treicolt

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

She nudged his food box a little farther down the old TIE toolbox so it didn't tip off, then walked a slow circle around the mats with him, her hands hooked in the back pockets of her pants.

"Nah, didn't build it all myself," Tansu admitted, toeing one corner of the mat. "My sister 'n I cleaned up what my aunt and Knight Kaze started long before our time. Stuff tends to get dusty real fast on this planet. It's like the most...real thing about Denon. The dust.

And wo-hoah, good eye, you're the first one to call that thing by name. I'll be honest, when I first saw it, I just clocked it as a fancy weight scale. You really know your stuff."

Tydeus' transition started the moment they walked through the door. He'd been guarded, selective, and generally uncomfortable in the smokehouse but he seemed to shift in the training room. Almost to something predatory. Tansu whistled low through her teeth as he peeled off his layers, eyes keen on each weapon and armament with observant appreciation.

Mirroring his gear-down, she hung her hat on a hook with her oversized leather jacket with the faded Saber Squadron patch on the sleeve. Beneath didn't boast the armoury of Tydeus. Not even close. She only had a single leather holster slung around her hips; one side with a blaster, the other side her saber hilt. That was it.

A rogueish grin cracked her lips: "They ain't lackin, why, you want me to throw you over my shoulder? Add to the tally?" She unbuckled her holster and set it on the hook next to her accessories.

"That part, I can do, this Force teachin' stuff, I've never done before, so bare with me a bit." And the unsaid part was....the whole void and death feeling that eclipsed him. Art of the Small could be terribly intimate and a part of her worried his presence would be a non-starter.

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Tydeus of Tion
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[Tydeus of Tion]

The boy nodded once.

“I understand.”

And, gritting his teeth, he promptly squashed his presence in the Force with an effort of will, tamping it down as low as he could maintain it without exhausting himself. The Wound was still there, but slightly muted. Enough that mere proximity might not sicken her.

“Should we warm up first?” The boy gestured toward the mat, “See if you really can throw me over your shoulder,” a deadpan.

He started taking off his shoes and socks. Nobody wanted boot scuffs on their training mats.

Unspoken, the thought lingered that some sparring might help him understand her better, and her him. Jumping right into an advanced, primarily mental technique could be unsettling, perhaps even dangerous. He had primarily stayed away from techniques that did not rely upon visible manipulation of the world for exactly that reason. That, and of course, that Kaine Zambrano was an Epicanthix. Telepathy and illusions would avail Tydeus little in that regard.

He tucked his socks into the boots, bare feet on the mat.

“Know any Stava? Echani?” He asked, bouncing on the balls of his feet to warm up, stretching one arm across his chest, then the other.

Tansu Treicolt

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

Tansu blinked owlishly.

"Oh. You're serious." Her hands dusted against her hips and she shrugged, watching him. "Alright then, I.. guess."

He didn't laugh, did he. Not once yet. Tansu marked it and added it to her mental character sheet of this monofocused pepper-haired guy. She hadn't reached the same realization as he had with the implications of sharing a mental strain with someone who was, for all intents and purposes, a stranger. And a stranger whose Force presence left a chill in her chest at that.

But physical sparring? That she understood. Boots off, square up. She'd grown up in a family of five, fists and feet were a language of their own. Unrefined, but understood.

She bent to kick off her own shoes and socks, tossing them to the side before stepping onto the mat with an easy lope.

"Haven't heard 'bout Stava, you gonna show me?" she admitted, pulling her braid back and tying it into a quick loop. "Heard of Echani, sure, mostly from folks who talked like they invented fightin'." Her grin flashed.

"But that's it." And now she realized how much time she spent behind the sticks did not directly translate to mat practice. And every other confrontation she'd run from, or only used her saber as a distraction. But she dare not gulp sheepishly, only feign more bravado.

"Some Teras Kasi, y'know, sunspear, cyclone step, rising ember, yadda yadda, you seem like a guy who knows." Tansu dropped into a stance — knees loose, arms half-raised — somewhere between I'm ready and I saw this once in a tutorial.

"Alright poncho, let's see what this Stava's all about."

Then, instead of charging, she planted her feet and gave him a lopsided smile.

"Actually—y'know what? You go first. You're the guest."

Plus she was trying to be more Jedi-like every day! Didn’t Jedi not attack first? Honestly that seemed boring in any case beyond this current one.

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Tydeus of Tion
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[Tydeus of Tion]

“Sure.”

She took a defensive stance that Tydeus dissected in a few heartbeats. Basic posture, some training. Palawan style, like she said. No advanced forms. Weight distribution not quite right - as if she wasn’t used to gravity.

“The Echani style is all about analyzing your opponents. Highly ritualized. A lot of predictive counter-striking. For those with precognition, incredibly formidable. Highly praised by Jedi.”

He paced to the side, his eyes roving up and down her figure as they took stock of the finer details - the way she curled her fists, the positioning of her feet, the bend to her knees.

“But Stava isn’t like that at all.”

The boy settled into an Honoghr-pose, fingers open and splayed, curling slightly. Like claws.

“The Noghri invented it. Aggressive. But minimal striking. It’s all nerve pinches and joint locks and throws.” He stepped toward her, hands snapping out with the speed of lightning - one for her waist, the other to seize her wrist. Pivoting on the balls of his feet, all the way around he sought to hip toss her up and down onto the mat.

Tansu Treicolt

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

On the word throw, she felt the start of the turn — that shifting coil of his hips, the tightening at her waist and if she didn't move, her whole world threatened to tilt sideways.

Tansu jammed her back foot around his ankle with all the stubbourn force of the youngest sibling wrestling with the eldest and biggest. She stepped in through his centreline, trying to tangle his balance before he could pivot through the throw. For a half a second, she felt like it might work! Like his hips mighta faltered, and her feet stayed on the mat and her grin flashed like a sabaac gambler with a bluff just about to land.

But his adjustments were fast. Too fast.

So she panicked and clung. One arm hooked awkwardly behind his neck, the other wrapped around his ribs and she squeezed, feet scrambling for traction and head bumping somewhere near his shoulder.

"Nope!" She said louder that she might have liked, somewhere between a warning and a plea. "Don't like the lizard thing!" Whatever she was doing now was not from any tutorial, it was pure elbow, knee and instinct.

For half a beat she remained wrapped up, clinging and trying to scramble out her next move — letting the clear feeling of discomfort be her mechanism for stalling.

Rather than pushing herself away, she let herself feel fluid, reactionary, and roll through the unprecedented nearness. She let go, dropped low, real low, so her palms slapped the mat and swung her leg hard behind his ankles like she was trying to clear the aforementioned dust from the mats. There wasn't anything clean or telegraphed about it; just quick, nasty, and a tinge desperate.

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Tydeus of Tion
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[Tydeus of Tion]

"Hhuh," Tydeus grunted as he felted the arm around his neck and another around his gut as Tansu did her best to replicate a kowakian monkey lizard and cling to him.

He felt her fall away and heard the smack as she hit the mat, then something struck him in the foot and sent it flying out from under him. Off-balance, the boy toppled backward and landed directly on top of her.

Damn it.

Tydeus underestimated her. Took her lack of experience for a lack of tenacity. Foolish. He berated himself even as he scrabbled for control, unwilling to throw any strikes. She wasn't his enemy. He didn't want to hurt her. But frankly, after the leg sweep, he was wondering if he had been subconsciously taking it easy on her despite his determination to do exactly the opposite.

Recovering quickly, the boy sought to pin her arm under a knee, while his hands grabbed for her other arm to pull her onto her side and into a double wristlock. The Noghri would just go straight for breakage, snapping their opponent's limbs and tendons with the joint lock. Tydeus did not, trying to push the technique just far enough that she would feel the pressure of her joints locking.

"Didn't expect that," he said to her as they scrabbled on the mat, "are you hustling me?"

Tansu Treicolt

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

Tansu hit the mat with a grunt, the air knocked out of her in a very undignified oof. She barely had time to clock her small victory (woo hoo, he stumbled!) before his full weight came crashing down on top of her like a dropped crate.

"Hhf!" she wheezed, blinking up at the ceiling, arms pinned in a scramble of limbs. Then came the pressure. His knee braced down on her arm, his hands secured the other in a lock that felt as efficient as he looked. Tansu wriggled, testing the limits of the hold. What if she twist a bit to — nope. Or maybe if her knee — also no. But if she could get her elbow to just — hard extra no. Ouch.

She groaned when she felt it, the way her shoulder joint didn't want to go any further under his pressure. Despite herself, Tansu had to appreciate the control that made it fall only in the category of heartbeat elevation rather than searing pain. Or worse.

"Hustlin'?" She laughed out, breathless, "Aw poncho, you're the one who came huntin' for the granddaughter of a grandmaster warrior princess."

Backwater barbie twisted under him, still half-smiling and attempting to wriggle out of the hold with sheer persistence. It didn't grant her freedom, only a gasp at the sharpening pressure in her shoulder.

Her fingers slipped up against his side, catching on the hem of his shirt. The moment her skin brushed the cloth, her breath hitched and the world lurched.

A miralukan stood before her, no, she wasn't her, she was the shirt, looking up at an imposing shape of calloused, folded hands, bandaged eyes, and perfectly still posture. They spoke, low, even, and solemn:
"This is Breaker's Embrace. A finishing hold. Stava doctrine teaches: if you must end it, end it fast."​

—And then she was back on the mat, pinned and blinking, like she'd fallen asleep mid-fight. But it was all still the same, the light, the mat, Tydeus pressing her down with that same joint lock.

"Breaker's Embrace, huh? Kinda dramatic for something that just feels like getting — ow — sat on 'n pretzled."

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Tydeus of Tion
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[Tydeus of Tion]

Tydeus' hands went slack in shock and he sat back onto the mat, eyes wide, confused for a moment with fear as she'd gone entirely limp. As if she were somewhere else for a moment.

"What?"

He shook his head, strands of salt-peppered hair falling across his eyes. "How did you know that?"

Then a snort and he shifted, sitting on his knees near her, studying her again with that same intensity of a dissecting scalpel. For a moment, he feared he'd done something to hurt her. He barely knew her, he shouldn't care what happened to her. The droid would tell him it did not matter, as long as he acquired the necessary intelligence. But Tydeus was not a droid. And he did care about this blonde, as backwater as some of her mannerisms might be. They were... oddly endearing. He suppressed that line of thought, along with everything else he had tamped down. He didn't need another distraction. Couldn't afford it.

"I knew it," he went on before she could respond, "I thought when you went limp I - you are hustling me."

Tansu Treicolt

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

"Your shirt told me." Tansu answered, looking up at him upside down as he untangled them from the joint lock. Her arms stuck straight up, relieved not to be twisted and feeling the strain on her shoulders, and she wiggled her fingers for further explanation. "Psychometery."

And then, it was barely there, just a slip of his tongue, but she caught it. Her smile cracked wide open, bright and dimpled.

"Awe," she twisted from the flat of her back to her side and propped up on one elbow, "You were worried about me!" He looked mildly inconvenienced by the idea of that. She maintained her chit-eating grin and gathered herself up to sit upright and extended her arm across her chest to tease out any lingering tension in her shoulder. Over her elbow she looked at him and shook her head lightly.

"I ain't hustlin'. Maybe you're just underestimatin' or expectin' everyone to scrap like they're from one of your fancy monk schools."

She dropped her arm and shrugged, unbothered by the box he might have mentally put her in. Fair enough. She had said at the outset that she was more outlaw than Jedi these days, and hustling was a large part of cowboyin' around on Denon.

"You wanna go again? If that was Stava, you've still got Echani on your roster to show off." She sat back on the heels of her hands behind her, "And I still haven't thrown you over my shoulder." The corners of her mouth made a dismayed tick sound.

"Or do you want that to happen on a microscopic level with the Force stuff instead." Brow waggle.

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Tydeus of Tion
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[Tydeus of Tion]

The boy shook his head, smiling despite himself and let out a low chuckle. He scratched the back of his head.

"So sure of yourself, Master Jedi."

He looked up from the mat, saw her leaning back on her hands, and his eyes could not help but follow her. What would Bernard say to her quip, that perhaps he wanted her to throw him over her shoulder? Foolish. Tydeus met those blues that reminded him of open sky, still in wonder that someone in this galaxy - a Jedi no less - could be so...

... so what?

Untainted by darkness, as bright as a summer sun. And here he came, a storm cloud of ruin, to dim the day. Everything had a price. Tydeus paid his daily. The smile slipped away and once more his brow grew shadowed by lines of thought.

"If you want, though I suppose you could just touch my shoes and learn the forms, no? This psychometry - I've heard about it, but never seen it used. You can see memories of the past? Does it only work on objects or... people too?"

Tansu Treicolt

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

That was the first time she'd heard anything remotely jovial, if not normal, out of him. A chuckle. It was like a reward. She kept her grin but it eased into something less roguish and more congenial.

"Yes, but only if those are your fightin' boots." She grimaced — very likely that Tydeus didn't have anything to wear that wasn't made specifically to aid him in pursuit of revenge. All his clothes were fighting clothes.

"Memories of the past from the perspective of what's touched. So, yeah, could do a person, its trickier, but it can get real messy and complicated. Dependin' what memory surfaces. Feelings that aren't mine take over and it's like I'm livin' through whatever is bein' seen. For better or worse."

She crossed her legs and put her hands in her lap.

"Inanimate objects tend not to colour the memory, make it less complicated. Your shirt didn't feel anything about your Monky master, but if I touched you…" she tilted her head ".. If you felt shame, or pride, or even just curiosity at that moment, I'd feel some of that too. Maybe not all of it, but some I reckon."

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Tydeus of Tion
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[Tydeus of Tion]

Monky... master...

It took Tydeus more time than he cared to admit to mentally catch up and realize who she was talking about. He could not say that he had ever, in his entire life, heard of the great Miralukan Teras Kasi master referred to in quite that way. Somehow, he thought that the old teacher would find it amusing. If he was still alive.

"Hm," he nodded slowly, processing what she said after. The more they talked, the more he realized how much he had assumed at first glance. Placing her into a category based on appearance and accent, courtesy of an upbringing amid aristocracy. He could not say he had ever had a conversation with a farmhand beyond a handful of words. Certainly no discourse on the nature of Force techniques. Tansu continued to disabuse him of those notions.

He held his palm in front of him, examined the lines of it.

Would it help her to understand him? And would he learn anything of her past? Likely not unless he tried. He'd studied the technique before, but only in holocrons and archives. Never on a person. A challenge, then. He'd always been competitive. Even before it mattered.

They sat not so far apart, Tydeus on his knees, her with her legs crossed. The boy held up the hand he had been studying, raised it in the distance between them, as if to press it against an invisible window. An open invitation.

"You reckon." He said simply, focused on quieting his mind of all distractions, too intent on seeing if he too could use this power.

Tansu Treicolt

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

She watched him. The room went silent when he retreated into his thoughts, looking at his hand and thinking through something she was not privy to.

Tansu would never understand the quiet thinkers. She did all her thinking out loud. Her thoughts knew little privacy.

"Ah-halright, way to cowboy up, Tydeus." This was only the highest of compliments. She liked his quiet resolve and tenacity. He readily launched from one challenge to the next, embracing each. He'd done it without question at least three times since they'd met. He was very intense and seemed full of consequence.

She bit her lip sheepishly before her admission: "This one, I flat out don't know how to teach. It runs in the blood for Kiffar, so alls I can say is open up, and the skin'll tell you what it wants to share I guess. The second you break contact it'll be over."

Gently she pressed the heel of her hand against is, then palm, then fingers. Involuntarily, she trembled. Never had she done anything like this with someone she didn't already have some sort of Force connection to, and the thrill shivered up her spine like static.

"So don't let go." The girl simpered and thread her fingers between the spaces of his.

Given this was Tydeus' first foray, a few things could happen. One: Nothing. Two: A very intense delve into one specific memory. Or three: a smorgasbords of half-glimpsed dreamings would assault him in a flurry, one after the other, like a typhonic vortex.

And since Tansu busied herself with opening herself up to accept a transfer of information from Tydeus, she did nothing to curate his experience one way or the other.

The room would fall away, either in a rush or a slow dissipation, and the metaphysical world would no longer be.

Suddenly dropping from a chute, rolling to stand in a dimly lit containment room aboard a space station. Adrenaline pumped through her blood, then startled fear. The low growl of a rancor rolled through the air and her brother ignited his green blade, bathing the room in an emerald glow. Tansu did not. She should have run away, but they had nowhere to go. Panicked, trapped. Instead, she took a step forward, one hand out, shaking, terrified, but focused.
"C'mon now," she whispered, voice forcibly steady. Her heart screamed in her chest, but her mind reached for the beast. Not to control necessarily, but to connect, see if she could buy them time. A memory inside a memory — a stallion back home. The rancor huffed. Her jacket rustled in the exhale. Its teeth gleamed. "You're trapped here, huh? I know the feeling."

A face wet with tears, clutching someone's shirt, soaking it through, voice barely above a breath: "I don't know who I am without her." Hollow, jagged pain, preparing to feel loss.

Her whimpering suddenly became someone else's, a shepherd behind her, whispering about Valdeer gone missing. A creature, unnatural, tearing through the herd.
"You're a Jedi, right?" he'd asked, voice breaking.
She answered without hesitation and leapt to the cause.
The beast , unnatural and unholy half-rotted, skin split in curling ridges, hissed at her from between the rocks. Its hunger twisted through the Force, feral and sharp. Fear twisted in her gut, but the promise to the farmer felt solid in her mind.
"You're only spooky 'til you're known."
The connection formed slowly, painfully, as she closed the distance.
The first time she tried to ride it, it threw her.
So did the second. And the third.
She got up each time, bruised and swearing.
Then the fourth go — Flight. Wind in her braid. Dirt under her fingernails. A scream turned laugh as she gripped the beast's neck and rode it.

The wind cold brisk wind of flight turned into a hot spray of sparks. The yellow blade of her saber sliced through circuits. Alarms howled. Smoke filled her nose.
"Sorry," she said without turning around — "If y'ain't willing to see things differently, you're part of the problem." A shift of something in her gut then she ran. Slid under a blast door just before it shut, locking the Sith inside.

Her panting run turned to laughter in the dark, breathless, on the floor of a bedroom, her fingers tangled with Talin's, adrenaline still vibrating through her blood. A buzz thrumming in her chest. They'd accomplished something, something big — and now they were grinning like outlaws who'd robbed the stars. "Should we bring the cat?" she asked, dead serious. Amos blinked at them from the bed like the galaxy's oldest, least impressed smuggler.

Flash after flash—
Hands curling around a ship's yoke and yanking hard, forcing a near-miss.
A leap off a roof without checking what was below.
The fear stricken clutch of her chest looking across at a Zeltron, pointing at her with a smoking gun. Feeling furious, horrified at the indignity. Feeling helpless in the suspension of whimsy.
"Well ain't you sexist!" Yelled through a foul smelling sewer at a creature four times her size.

— until he chose to withdraw.

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Tydeus of Tion
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[Tydeus of Tion]

Their fingers interlaced, palm to palm. Tydeus controlled his breathing, smoothed the sudden spike in his pulse. Concentrating, honing his mind to a razored edge, Tydeus thought of the history of her hand, written into every line and callous and tiny scar. They told a story. Immersed in the Force, he felt a pull as the visions began to swim. Only as they sat there did Tydeus have a sudden premonition of danger.

Not all his memories should be seen by others, especially a Jedi. There were allies he had acquired that...

Don't let go.

But for this he would have. He should have. Yet, he did not wish to.

Too late, his thoughts pulled away and suddenly saw with eyes that were not his own, thoughts accompanying memories.

For her part, Tansu did not come face to face with the obliteration of Tion and the millions of deaths, as she no doubt feared. A jumble of memories spilled forth, snapshots of training, vignettes of conversations past:

Sweat dripped down Tydeus' brow and into his eyes, stinging. He hung upside down from a bar in a small converted cargo hold.

Four days, 16 hours. The time elapsed since the Pellaeon picked up his encrypted beacon and scooped him out of dead space where his stolen freighter's engine failed from Dromund Kaas.

Air rushed from his nose as he grunted and swung himself up, muscles clenching in his gut. Another repetition. His stomach felt as though someone was hammering nails into it. Tydeus hissed through his teeth and swung himself up again in another crunch.

Beneath him lay a training mat. An assortment of weapons sat neatly in racks on the walls. All sorts. A holotrainer control panel stood affixed to the wall. Why train in the sparse environment of a Star Destroyer when you could be on Haruun Kal's darkest jungle? Unless you were a sadist.

Tydeus stared at the upside down lines of the sterile white walls, then willed himself up into another crunch as he hung suspended. The folds of his loose black tunic felt soaked through.

Four days, 16 hours, and the only time Tydeus had not been in the training room was when he ate and when he slept.

He grimaced and pushed out one more repetition.

"The expurgation of Tion and its triplet moons by the Sith has set into motion a chain of events..." "...In which you have been projected to play a key role."

Antipater finally looked up from his vivisected project. His faceplate was inscrutable and polished to a reflective sheen.

"When you escaped your dead world, where was it you planned to go?"

“To oldest enemies of the Sith. To the Jedi. I thought they would…”

A flash of sparks, fading quickly. Another. Circuitry splayed out from Antipater’s project like intestines. A droid creating a droid.

“I thought they would be more.”

"I do not deal in virtues, but in action. The Lightsworn march on the Sith come dawn."

He extended his arm.

"Will you reforge your blade and be among them? Or must I discard the shattered pieces before me for the broken tool they are?"

A long moment passed. The breath before the plunge. Eyes bloodshot and haunted and filled with far too much pain for a boy of eighteen met Bernard’s gaze.

Finally.

In one motion, Tydeus’ hand shot out and seized Bernard’s, fingers curling around the man’s forearm in a grip of iron.

”Remake me then,” he hissed, “so long as I cut.“

On a street of New Kaas City, a boy drug his way out of the rubble of collapsed buildings, pulling himself along the ground on his belly, fingertips scrabbling for purchase. Caked in the dust of pulverized permacrete and drying gore, he barely looked human. Ribs so shattered and poking through his lungs so that he could hardly draw breath, the last scion of House Tion choked on air and coughed blood.

Tydeus' vision hazed in and out of blackness. He pulled himself forward and fully out of the rubble through sheer will. He would not die here. He could not. His work was not finished. The taste of copper in his mouth. He spat another gob of blood out and tried to take in air. Pain wracked him and his eyes blurred with tears. Not like this. Not like this. He pulled himself forward another foot, fingertips bloody inside the gloves. Darkness closed in around the corners of his sight.

He thought he heard footsteps...

"There he is. Relay to the Mors Mon, we have one in custody."

At last, the barrage of memories ceased as Tydeus pulled away. A small frown creased his brow and he looked down at his hand, thinking of all he had seen through her eyes.

"Our lightsabers are of a color," he remarked simply, though his thoughts dwelled on the tearstained embrace. "Did you truly tame a rancor?"

He looked up.

"Tansu... what is it?"

The boy grew very still. He should not have done this. What had she seen? If she had seen Empyrean, then... The blood in his veins grew cold.

Tansu Treicolt

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

Whether it was his intent to only give her staccatoed insights to his mind, or a boon on his behalf, Tansu only saw fragments of conversations that she'd never been privy to, but felt the resonance of each. Resilience. Disappointment. Hope. Desperation. Fear. The sheer agony of shattered ribs and froth-corrupted longs and the flare of relief turned cold after pulling himself — herself? — from an early grave.

The contrast couldn't have been more stark. Her whirlwind of wild care and recklessness versus his disciplined, grief-focused crucible.

Air filled the space between their palms and she blinked back to the room, swaying slightly, and left her hand facing up and outward for a few beats as she mentally recalibrated back to the present.

"Wheat 'n gold." She murmured, vaguely acknowledging probably the only similarity that could be seen between their worlds. There were fragments of overlap, Bernard she recognized only from Kyric's stories, but not by name — description only — and the droid maybe but..her droid was a cute little astromech. The one in Tydeus' life seemed sinister. Overlord-y. Was he a pawn somehow? She had so many questions. He seemed so burdened by more than the Force wound she'd felt initially.

His question about the rancor went unanswered, for her mind was preoccupied with heavier questions. Her hand lowered slowly, like it had forgotten what it was doing. Her quiet stretched into something of a spell, her thumb brushing her knee in a steady rhythm, not quite looking at him until he called her out on her cageyness.

"Tansu... what is it?"

"When you pulled yourself outta that rubble… who found you?"A pause. "You were so close to gone. I could feel it. Chest barely workin', fingers bleedin' through your gloves, all metal in your mouth." She had to swallow in real time, to convince herself the coppery sensation she'd felt did not exist anymore.

"You were put into custody?"

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Tydeus of Tion
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[Tydeus of Tion]

Slowly, the boy’s lips thinned. His expression grew frigid, his eyes a coldness to match - no longer summer storm gray, but the skies of winter. Those words of hers, a reminder that he should not put his mind at the mercy of strangers. Even ones as compassionate as she. It jeopardized the interruption of plans too long in the making.

“I was part of a raid on Dromund Kaas,” he said, “Unsuccessful. I was too weak. Almost died.”

And not even against Kaine himself, but one of his underlings.

Pathetic.

“The Sith captured me. I was held. Interrogated.” He looked away. “Eventually I escaped… Vengeance alone wasn’t enough. A lesson I had to learn the hard way. Why I’m here, to learn the tools I need to defeat Carnifex.”

Tansu Treicolt

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

Everything shifted. Where he'd been curious and eager to rise to a challenge, he slipped into something self effacing and cold.

Hands folded in her lap, she frowned at him through loose wisps of blonde."C'mon now. Y'aint weak. I dunno how you're sayin' that when you look at all you've gone through and you're still here in one piece 'n chompin' at the bit to stick to your plans."

Her eyes closed for a moment, desperate for something optimistic to say. She couldn't bear misery in her company. Even though she'd just been in his shoes, she couldn't fully grasp the reality of his life: so intense, so focused, so dedicated.

"I'm sure you've heard of Ryv Karis." Her eyes opened and she brushed away a loose strand of hair and with a short, semi-exasperated huff "Who hasn't? But y'know, he didn't win many of his fights." At least that's what her parents had told their kids, fondly recalling the tenacity of their Kiffar brother and using him in lesson after lesson about getting back on the horse and doing the right thing. "And he wasn't weak. Not at all. He accomplished what he wanted in the end." Albeit at the cost of his life.

"Anyways." With a shudder of her shoulders, as if shaking off the personality of his personal cheerleader, she went on: "Psychometery seemed to work for you. Don't get all cool because you were successful and now you have another tool in your ever-growin' arsenal. Y'wanna get goin' on the next still?"

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Tydeus of Tion
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[Tydeus of Tion]

Indeed, Tydeus had heard of Ryv. Who hadn't heard of the Jedi who put down Darth Solipsis on Tython and stopped a cataclysm? And yet, for all his efforts, Darth Solipsis walked once more among the living. And where was Ryv? Dead. This was the great failing of Jedi. Their fires always guttered and died, no matter how bright they burned, they always went out. And as soon as the light faded, the shadows returned. So, what had Ryv accomplished in the end? Another failure.

Tydeus refused to become such a man. Whatever it took. Though he would not tell Tansu this. For all his derision of the Jedi, he thought that today, for the first time, he actually met one. Oh, the Lightsworn claimed to be Jedi in name. But in practice? Just weaker blades, dulled by convictions. Tansu did not seem to be a blade at all. Far too much compassion. Mercy. Kindness.

He feared the day that mercy was abused, the day her compassion faded from betrayal and horror. They were both young. He wondered if he would have ever been like her, if not for his own cataclysm. But no. He would have been a lesser man, consumed by political advancement and the weight of station. Maybe a happier man, though.

"Yes," he said, "Let's. Now that I have mastered pyschometery, Art of the Small should prove easy."

His expression remained unchanged, but for the faintest twitch of the lips.

Tansu Treicolt

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

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Her pep talk didn't seem to land. Or if it did, his expression didn't change and he didn't say anything affirming.

Where did he go when he slipped away into his quiet considerations? Back into the memories, the glimpses of clandestine conversations she'd seen? She should have asked more about them. Tried to understand him more when she had the chance, but she'd been so uncomfortable with his coolness that she instantly pivoted away and back to the purpose of their time together.

The glimpse of his humour came so out of nowhere that Tansu nearly missed it. She met his ghost of a grin with the fullness of her own.

"I always say it wrong." She shook her head and waved her hand dismissively, no care for posturing. "Blame the accent.

Though, if you wanna keep at it, you could probably work to delve into more detail of memories. If you were askin' about rancors, and seein' my lightsaber, those weren't the same event. You got a jumble for sure. You can try and be more focused —" her head cocked to the side. "Which seems to be your specialty." If he could make fun of her accent, she could poke at his multi-day training sessions.

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Tydeus of Tion
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