Private Living Mythology

[Alicio Organa]

Senate Building, Alicio's Office
Coruscant
​

Alicio had been dreading this meeting for the past few days.

He'd never met Eloise, not that he remembered. She was a stranger to him, and he to her. But he'd known of her for a long time. Rhiannon had shown him a picture with her and her brother Marcus, wearing most of the cake they were supposed to be baking. Alicio had been a very different man, back then. He had yet to take on the burdens of the Senate. Had yet to branch out much from overseeing his own little city.

Since then, Alicio Organa had been betrayed by Eloise's mother, killed her, was betrayed by her again, and took her into custody after she stole his hand. He couldn't stop his skin from pricking at the last name Dinn.

He tried to keep the nervousness from his body, still and silent in his office chair. Four screens were open in front of him, each displaying various statistics, company offers, refugee reports... the list went on and on. He divided his attention between them, trying to keep his mind from the scheduled meeting. But always, his thoughts returned to it. What would he say? What could he say?

He glanced up, taking a deep breath to center himself. Then, before Eloise had the chance to knock on the door, Alicio spoke.

"Come in."

- Eloise Dinn -

 

[Eloise Dinn]

Eloise had been here before. In the distant annals of childhood memories, both from when her mother had been a senator and later her grandfather, she remembered these twisting, winding halls leading to sleek, elegant offices. It had seemed massive then, its size and scope incomprehensible. The building was still pretty huge, though it was a little more manageable to her now.

Finding the office of the Senator of Alderaan—just one planet out of hundreds, if not thousands of worlds with representatives in the Alliance—still proved to be something of a challenge. But she persevered, if only because she wanted answers.

Stopping at the door, she raised a hand to knock…

"Come in."

She paused to glance around for surveillance cameras or sensors before shoving open the door. The gesture wasn’t violent so much as careless; she took a couple steps into the room and paused as the door shut behind her, green eyes surveying the room.

Her gaze was naturally drawn toward Alicio, the only other person there. The Zaathrian jewelry around her neck and wrists clinked together as she approached his desk. She was tall enough that she could easily peer over the screens in front of him. “You’re Alicio Organa?” she asked, sounding a bit surprised as she studied him. “You look younger than I expected.”

Alicio Organa​

 

[Alicio Organa]

He was a little surprised by how hard Eloise pushed open his door.

Looking up at the Padawan, Alicio was quick to fold up his screens, replacing them in cabinets below his desk, until only a single datapad laid open before him. He disregarded it, however, standing as the purple-haired girl entered. He'd forgone any fancy capes for their meeting, instead wearing a long, black coat.

“You’re Alicio Organa? You look younger than I expected.”

"That's me," he offered, finding a tight smile. "And you're Eloise. I was expecting someone a little shorter." A twinge of a teasing smile, before his face fell to something more curious, more... cautious.

"Are you hungry?" Alicio walked over to a side table, opening a glass breadbox, to let the scent of cinnamon spill into the room. "I baked a loaf this morning, and I've been hoping for someone to help me finish it."

- Eloise Dinn -

 

[Eloise Dinn]

Alicio was probably of average height for a man, which meant Eloise nearly towered over him. "I didn't get my height from my mother, that's for sure," she muttered.

She also didn't expect him to be so friendly. His offer of fresh bread he had baked himself brought a twitch to her features and a pang in her heart. It was akin to something Daddy would've done. He loved anything that allowed him to work with his hands, including cooking.

"No thanks." In her experience, it was best not to eat or drink anything given by someone who had killed and imprisoned a relative. Even if by all accounts Alicio was some sort of angelic prince of peace. "I came here to ask you some questions. Is this seat taken?

"Amani told me you crashed on Zaathru, and that you were there for a while. I want to know what you did while you were there."

Alicio Organa​

 

[Alicio Organa]

"No thanks. I came here to ask you some questions. Is this seat taken?"

"Ah, okay." Alicio's face grew a touch more serious. Either Eloise had an aversion to carbs, or she wasn't mincing words today. Sure, the bread had been a test, to gauge the young Dinn's demeanor, but he truly needed to get rid of it as well. Perhaps August and Liana could help, when they were old enough. "Take it."

Eloise was quick to get to the point. The Count frowned, memories of icy glaciers clouding his eyes. He replaced the glass covering on his cinnamon bread, and returned to his seat. "That is a hefty question," Alicio began, perched on the edge of his seat, his hands threaded together on the table.

"Myself and... my late friend, Kai Bamarri, were headed to Lao-mon for a visit. We had to stop to adjust course, and we were shot down on Zaathru, landing in the Northern Hemisphere somewhere. Kai and I tried to salvage what we could, but we needed to find help, so we set out. We found a village of Shaal under attack by a mutant monstrosities, and stepped in."

With a stray finger, Alicio began to trace a swirling pattern in his table, a line of frost following his path. "I found out I could do this. And the Shaal started worshipping me." The idea of it obviously made him uncomfortable. He made a point not to put himself over the people he served, and they'd forced him into that position. "I tried to explain that I wasn't a deity, but that's... hard to do by telepathic pictionary. They were in danger of dying out, so Kai and I stayed to protect the village from more mutants." Every day, he'd been dying to return to Amani, to his family. The memory of it obviously didn't sit well with him.

"From there... Rhiannon and a Force-sensitive Shaal arrived." He didn't say 'your mother', for obvious reasons. "We struck a deal. If she helped us deal with the constant attacks, we would allow her to send us off-world." Alicio frowned. "Long story short, she betrayed Kai and I at the eleventh hour, I lost my hand, Kai saved me from losing more, and Amani arrived to pick us up. And... we took Ishani. Erm, Rhiannon." The hesitation in his tone betrayed his feelings on the matter. He was obviously unsure if that had been the correct move.

"Any questions?"

- Eloise Dinn -

 

[Eloise Dinn]

“Sounds like the Moon Gun got you,” Eloise mused out loud as she took a seat. Her posture was not relaxed. She was poised to spring into action at the slightest notice. “That’s how it usually happens.” She didn’t say much, preferring to let him talk and tell the tale of his time on Zaathru.

It sounded pretty typical. Crash on a primitive planet, become a god to the locals. The bit about mutant monstrosities struck her as odd, but Force knew what kind of strange things dwelled in the unexplored regions of the planet.

“Which god?” she asked. At his discomfort, a hint of a wry, incredulous smirk curled the corners of her mouth. “Did you really hate every minute of it? Helping people and being loved by them for it with a devotion you’ll never find anywhere else…”

Eloise had reveled in being a goddess. She knew she wasn’t really divine, but pretending to be had been no less fulfilling. Perhaps it was because she had grown to love Zaathru, the world and its people. Even now it remained more of a temptation than a repulsive notion, seductive but ultimately unhealthy and wrong, no matter how right it might feel.

“Dev Ossian,” she accurately guessed who the Force Sensitive Shaal was. The way she said his name indicated she wasn’t very fond of him. “Did you kill him?”

Alicio Organa​

 

[Alicio Organa]

"Moon... gun..." Alicio rolled the words around in his mouth, seeming to not like the taste very much. He didn't fancy having a moon gun to blame for not seeing his family for weeks.

Eloise asked him which god he'd been mistaken for, which made Alicio cock his head in curiosity. If she was searching for that answer, that meant she must have known quite a bit about Zaathru's pantheon. "Moroz," he answered slowly, halting his tracing hand.

“Did you really hate every minute of it? Helping people and being loved by them for it with a devotion you’ll never find anywhere else…”

Alicio's discomfort didn't leave his face. "I did." He frowned. "For all the... accomplishment... I felt, helping them, every moment I was there was spent dreaming of home. And..." As for his other reasons, he seemed to have some difficulty articulating. "All of their blind faith was built on a lie. And it made me feel guilty, every time I used it. Even if I had no choice. It was awful."

Alicio nodded as Eloise said Dev's name. He thought he'd heard one of them say it. "No, I did not. Kai removed one of his horns, but he escaped." Alicio pursed his lip. "Not before taking a nibble of my hand, mind you."

Suddenly, he wasn't so hungry anymore.

- Eloise Dinn -

 

[Eloise Dinn]

“Yes, that is what I said,” Eloise responded with teenaged snark. She was oblivious to the source of his discomfort, and even if she did know she wouldn’t have cared that the nickname tasted bad. “There is a powerful ancient weapon on one of Zaathru’s moons that will shoot down any ship that comes near. It’s responsible for pretty much every crashed ship on the planet’s surface. We think there used to be two guns, one on each of the two moons, but one of them isn’t working anymore.”

They thought he was Moroz? She supposed that made sense if he was slinging around ice powers. “Moroz is a god of destruction,” she said, leaning her head against her hand. “An appearance from him is supposed to signal catastrophe. They were probably hoping you would spare them if they kept you happy.” No wonder he hadn’t enjoyed it. That kind of worship was based on fear, not love. Granted, she also didn’t have a family outside of Zaathru waiting for her, and she hadn’t begun to feel discomfort with her role until she learned her parents’ true reasons for playing along with the divine charade.

“From the time I was seven years old, they called me Damara. The goddess-personification of the moon of the same name—the Queen of the Night.” She twisted the rings on her fingers. “It’s great fun when you’re young, being adored and spoiled beyond reason, answering prayers and granting wishes and riding into battle against slavers. Like a great game of pretend. Until you grow up and realize that none of it is a game. Those people you killed are really dead. You’re surrounded by people who don’t see you as a person with flaws and vulnerabilities. Your whole life is based on lies.” She shrugged and stopped talking about it.

"No, I did not. Kai removed one of his horns, but he escaped. Not before taking a nibble of my hand, mind you."

“He was always so vain about his horns,” she muttered with a smirk. “Did you kill anyone else?” She spoke in a frank, almost flippant tone, but something in her green-eyed gaze betrayed the gravity of the question. It was the whole reason she was here, and his answer would determine what happened next.

Alicio Organa​

 

[Alicio Organa]

Seemingly impervious to the teen's sass, Alicio pondered the idea of an orbital cannon. "That would explain why Zaathru's remained so disconnected from the galaxy at large..." It also was likely responsible for millions of deaths over the years, not to mention the millions of people kept isolated on the planet's surface.

The revelation that Moroz was a lord of destruction caused Alicio some amount of pain. The Count tilted his head down, staring at the surface of the table. "The Shaal always did keep their distance from Kai and I. They were reverent, but... brutal. Never scared, from what I saw. Those people were zealots, warriors... I imagine I could have told them to conquer the world, and they would have tried." The idea that in saving a group of surrounding villages from monsters, he had accidentally founded a death cult to a destruction deity, was an ironic twist of fate.

Eloise then explained that she'd been the object of their religion, too. It hardly surprised the Count, but he gave her his undivided attention all the same. "I'm sorry you had to endure that. For so long." He left it there, too.

“Did you kill anyone else?”

There was a shift in Eloise's tone, her posture, that betrayed her. Alicio studied it for a moment, icy grey eyes unwavering. "No, I did not," he said quietly. "Why do you ask?"

- Eloise Dinn -

 

[Eloise Dinn]

“The whole reason I came here was to make sure you hadn’t killed or harmed anyone I care about,” Eloise replied, her frankness belying a ferocity coiled like a rattlesnake waiting to strike.

Green eyes closed for a moment, lulling the serpent to sleep. “... And because you’re the husband of my master, so it’s best that we not have any… bad blood between us. I don’t care that you killed my mother or put her in prison." Except she did care, because it would undoubtedly cause problems at home. But that was none of Alicio's business, and not really his fault either. "I am my own person, not just Rhiannon Dinn’s daughter. But if you look at me and all you see is her, that's going to be a problem.”

Alicio Organa​

 

[Alicio Organa]

Eloise's assertion was a bit more chilly than Alicio had been expecting. Of course, her continued caveat warmed the mood of the room a little, but her initial slip showed the viper she hid. He'd faced down sharper fangs and more venomous tongues. He would gladly suffer hers, if it gave the young padawan a little peace of mind.

"I am my own person, not just Rhiannon Dinn’s daughter. But if you look at me and all you see is her, that's going to be a problem.”

That got Alicio's brow up. He stole an exhale, before responding. "...She showed me a picture, of you and Marcus. A long time ago. My first memory of you is through her." He paused. There was no way to say what he needed to without risking her wrath. But he had to speak the truth. "I'm... I will try to divorce the two of you in my mind. I won't lie, it's... difficult... for me to do. I have bad memories of Ishani. Memories that make anything to do with her... feel wrong. Uncomfortable. That won't go away with one meeting."

He was still in his seat. Too still, like a church grotesque. "But... In the end, I think you have more in common with me than with Rhiannon." He paused, either to let her ask 'why', or to let her fill in the gaps for him. Perhaps she saw it too.

- Eloise Dinn -

 

[Eloise Dinn]

Rhiannon had a bad habit of revealing secrets to her children in moments of weakness. With Arcturus gone, she took comfort in drink, and the booze loosened her tongue. Reminiscing about the past gave way to confessions and admissions that made the goddess seem all too human. "He was one of my possibilities," she had said of Alicio. "A wasted opportunity." The things she had uttered in her careless stupor had shaped how Eloise viewed the man in front of her long before this moment arrived.

So, she understood his honesty and found it honorable. She would've been satisfied with his willingness to try and overcome those biases, but the vagueness of his discomfort bothered Eloise more than she was willing to admit. "Why?" she demanded. "What was she to you?"

You don’t become traumatized by an acquaintance, not in the way he seemed to have been by her mother. Rhiannon had never bothered to define their relationship. She only hinted at closeness and care.

"But... In the end, I think you have more in common with me than with Rhiannon."

"I don't know what you're trying to say." She tried to sound tough and unflinching, but a momentary twitch disrupted her hardened features and betrayed the vulnerability lurking beneath her flinty stare.

Alicio Organa​

 

[Alicio Organa]

Who was she to me?

Alicio's face fell as he considered the question. A long, drawn out moment of thinking, before his lips opened again. "A drinking buddy," he finally said, layers of meaning trapped behind it's façade of simplicity.

"I don't know what you're trying to say."

Alicio bit his cheek. He'd noted the slip in her defenses, the chink in her armor. Of course, he wouldn't purposefully use it against her. But he'd be lying if he said he didn't want to explore it further, if only to understand Eloise a little better. "Let me... put it this way..."

"I knew Ishani when she was still in the Alliance. She was... lost. Her world had used and abandoned her. So I offered to help. To give her a voice again, one that had been taken by Chaldea. Because I truly... truly believed that she could do good. I gave her my trust."

The Count let his thumb trace along his forefinger. "She... broke it. Time and time again. Proved to me, to the world that she couldn't be trusted. That who I was, and who she had become, were entirely different people. But, despite that, I keep giving her chances. Because I know there's good in her. I saw it, with my own eyes, once upon a time. Somewhere, past all the pain and loss, there's a friend. A mother, excited to show me pictures of her kids." He refocused on Eloise, his face searching hers.

"Does any of that resonate with you?"

- Eloise Dinn -

 

[Eloise Dinn]

The vague nature of his words combined with the obvious hidden meaning behind them made Eloise feel sick to her stomach. She was suspicious of ambiguity, and ambiguity relating to her mother’s relationships with men other than her father was perhaps the worst type. Mainly because she often found herself wondering if all their lives would be better if she hadn’t chained her life’s devotion to cowardly, unreliable Arcturus Dinn.

As Alicio talked about what Ishani had done to him, she thought that at least would be the end of it. But rather than expressing nothing but loathing for the woman who had caused him such pain, he claimed that he could still see the good in her. The chink in Eloise’s armor began to grow. Some part of her needed to demonize her mother into a great and terrible monster. Otherwise she would just be a pathetic and sad person—someone Eloise might easily become one day. But deep down, she knew just how wretchedly human her mother really was.

She could not admit that out loud. Instead, she fished around in her pockets until she found a small metal object, which she then placed on Alicio’s desk. The palm-sized piece of tarnished copper had been damaged by a fire, the extreme heat having warped its edges, but the shape of an eye at its center remained tangible. It hummed with a strange energy which was both tantalizing and repulsive.

“She had this on her when she was captured,” Eloise explained. “It lets you relive the past with subtle changes and varying outcomes. Whenever my dad would disappear, she would get drunk and lose herself in all the possibilities out of her reach. She’d be gone for days. Sometimes she would tell me what she saw.”

She stared at the table as if avoiding eye contact would hide the vulnerability he had exposed. “A lot of the alternate scenarios involved you. There was one in particular—she said you two went to the beach to look for mermaids, and she wanted so badly to kiss you, but she didn’t because she felt like she wasn’t good enough. Well, she probably lived a thousand lifetimes with that thing where she kissed you and everything turned out just fine.” She breathed a sigh, then lifted her eyes. The hardness returned to her gaze. “Does that answer your question?”

Alicio Organa​

 

[Alicio Organa]

Alicio immediately frowned as a small copper disk was placed heavily on his table. He found his eyes inexplicably drawn to it, even as the sight of it set alarm bells off in his mind. He could sense the Sea, at the corners of his mind, beginning to roil with a sudden storm. The taste of it was rancid.

Still, he listened attentively as Eloise explained the object. It was obviously an object of extreme power, something that his meager Force-infusing abilities couldn't ever hope to replicate. He had almost been tempted to reach out and hold it, until...

“A lot of the alternate scenarios involved you. There was one in particular—she said you two went to the beach to look for mermaids, and she wanted so badly to kiss you..."

The Count's hand, which had begun to inch forward, suddenly pulled back, hidden under the table. His face was one of alarm. Perhaps a bit of sadness. "Eloise, I... I don't think I want to touch that." Still, he seemed unsure. He sighed. "But... yes. I think it does."

This eye let someone explore alternate realities. Which meant that they existed.

Did that mean the past, the future, wasn't set in stone after all?

- Eloise Dinn -

 

[Eloise Dinn]

“Just touching it doesn’t do anything,” Eloise assured him. She picked up the Eye to prove her words. “I don’t know how it works, actually. I think my father made it, but I’m not even sure of that.” She fiddled with it a bit, staring down at the hunk of copper like she didn’t understand why it even existed. Young as she was, Eloise had no real regrets for it to tempt her with.

“I don’t have any use for it,” she said, tossing it somewhat carelessly back onto the desk. “It should be destroyed—but I don’t know how to get rid of an alchemized object.” She rolled her eyes. “Of course the Jedi don’t believe in destroying 'artifacts' anymore. If I handed it off to Master Cthylla, it would wind up in the Temple vault for some poor bastard to find decades or even centuries later.”

Looking up at him, she leaned back in her chair. “I don’t suppose you could do something with it? Amani mentioned that you could kind of do... stuff with the Force.” Was it still called alchemy when a Light Sider did it?

Alicio Organa​

 

[Alicio Organa]

Even as Eloise proved the object was safe to handle, Alicio didn't reach for it. He let the Eye rest where it did, though he stared at it for a long moment before turning back to her. Listening.

So, she wanted it destroyed? Or for him to use it, somehow? That furrowed his brow further. He knew, somewhere deep down, that he shouldn't take it. Or, at least, keep it in a locked box before relinquishing it to Valery. But there was a temptation there.

Not to see his past changed. He knew it would only leave him feeling anxious, empty. Besides, he was content with his life, beyond content. He had Amani, the twins, friends that cared for him, a position that let him make a difference... No, he was more interested in the mechanics. How it saw alternate pathways. How to apply that to the Future.

Even if he did have his regrets.

"I... I likely could do something with it." The Count nodded, slowly, cautiously. "I don't know if I should. But I'll... hold onto it. For now." Slowly, he reached across, and took the disk, slipping it into a drawer.

He wouldn't use it yet. Wouldn't even tinker with it, until he could tell Amani Serys .

"Have you been taught... how the Jedi Order views fate, Eloise?" Alicio's mood had sufficiently cooled. The object had set him on edge.

- Eloise Dinn -

 

[Eloise Dinn]

“Blow it up,” Eloise suggested. “Drop a nuke on it. Wait. Alderaanians don’t have nukes, right?” Lame.

A cooler Alicio was, well, cool. For her at least. She felt like she could handle him better now that the surface layer of pleasantries had been stripped away, and she wasn't the only one who was vulnerable here.

"Have you been taught... how the Jedi Order views fate, Eloise?"

“Traditionally they believed in submission to the Will of the Force,” she answered. “Destiny was a likely thing, but free will was still a factor, so don’t worry too much about your fate. Obsession is bad, like attachments. For the Sith destiny was certainly real, but static. No fate but what you make, though other factors were at play as well. Now most Jedi and Sith are in denial, mad about it, don’t know or don’t care about destiny. The nuance is lost on most people anyway. It sucks.” Her eyebrows rose. “Why do you ask?”

Alicio Organa​

 

[Alicio Organa]

"You sound disappointed." Alicio flicked a smile Eloise's way. She seemed just a bit too crestfallen at the realization that Alderaan didn't traditionally keep weapons of mass destruction around. It was enough of a silly realization that some of his stripped-away pleasantries had re-stripped themselves. "You could say superweapons and Alderaan... haven't mixed well, historically."

“Why do you ask?”

"Because of the nuance." Alicio's tone was measured, cautious. The last person he'd talked about fate with... Alicio killed that line of thinking before it had time to bloom. "I don't know how much Amani, or... Rhiannon, has told you about me, but... I'm a seer. The Past, the Future... I spend a lot of time thinking about it all."

"If there is such thing as alternate pasts, does that mean there's such thing as alternate futures?" He glanced at Eloise curiously. He wanted to know what she thought on the topic. Though, perhaps his... deeper musings, he would leave for later. He could practically hear the exasperated 'I don't know' from the teen already. "If so, what does that mean for how the Jedi view Destiny?"

- Eloise Dinn -

 

[Eloise Dinn]

"You could say superweapons and Alderaan... haven't mixed well, historically."

Eloise just smirked at him.

As a matter of fact, neither Amani nor Rhiannon had mentioned Alicio having such powers. She was aware that he was Force Sensitive, but he wasn’t a Jedi. She’d inferred that his connection was pretty basic and untrained—that is, practically useless. Apparently she was wrong, but the lack of training did mean Alicio had a limited understanding of the power he possessed. They all did, he was just more handicapped than someone with a spiritual framework to help with comprehending the Force.

"Yeah, you're probably overthinking it," she remarked dryly.

"If there is such thing as alternate pasts, does that mean there's such thing as alternate futures?

“I already told you that I don’t know how Visions of a Parallel World works.” She pointed in the direction he had shoved the copper Eye. That was the device’s official name. “It may be that it’s just visions, not actual alternate timelines. It shows you what you want to see, what you wish had happened, by tapping into whatever is in your psyche.” The unspoken implication of her words were that Alicio's visions could be much the same: semi-accurate predictions based on a combination of intelligent guesses, wishful thinking, and a byproduct of all living things being connected to the Force. In other words, a dream, as distinct from reality.

"If so, what does that mean for how the Jedi view Destiny?"

She studied him with her mother’s eyes. “If we’re dealing in hypotheticals, I guess it means there is no destiny set in stone. Neither the Jedi nor the Sith ever believed that. 'The future is always in motion.' What the hell is this ‘Destiny’ you speak of, anyway? Isn’t it just the path you’re on now, due to your choices and circumstances?”

Alicio Organa​