Faction (NJO) Giving Up

[Gatz Derrevar]

Ship: The Red Night
Weapons:
Tag: Open to Jedi

Gatz's quarters at the Jedi Temple were more spotless now than they'd been when he’d first arrived.

That was because he was vacating the room.

The books, datapads, and holocrons that had once dotted every surface of the room—the proof of his efforts to catch up in his studies—had all vanished, and been returned to the archives and those he had borrowed the materials from. There was no point in holding onto them, not when he didn't need them anymore.

Gatz Derrevar was no Jedi. He was a criminal and nothing more. Hutt scum, only capable cruelty and violence. And he was tired of trying to convince everyone that he could be more. Even his friends weren't buying it. The debacle in Makko’s hospital room had made that clear.

He'd spent the last few days secluded in his room, turning away all visitors as he'd thought on this course of action. A Jedi was all he'd ever wanted to be… but for all his efforts, he wasn't getting anywhere. His progress wasn't just stagnant—that would imply that there'd been progress in the first place—he was actively falling further behind. Nothing stuck for him. Book learning did nothing for him, but that was all he could rely on to try and catch up.

He felt like he was trying to run after a train, trying to swim while he was drowning in the ocean, and trying to cry out for help amidst the roar of thunder all at once.

Futile, in every way it could be.

With a sigh, Gatz packed the last of his things into his bag, and slid his dresser closed. He'd already dropped his classes, sent a brief message canceling his tutoring sessions with Cora, and sent word to the council that he was relinquishing his position in the Order.

The only thing left to do now was to… leave. Funny how the prospect of that was far more difficult now than when he'd left as a youngling.

 

[Kahlil Noble]

"Never thought of you as one to give up."

Kahlil yawned a little as he leaned in the doorway. Lifted up a mug to sip some caf from. Vera had made the cup for him when she was much younger, with Galaxy's #1 Dad written on the side. She hadn't actually made the cup itself, but she did color it. "You want to talk about it or do you just want to go?"

Gatz Derrevar

 

[Vera Noble]

Coruscant

​

Tag: Gatz Derrevar Kahlil Noble

"Dad?"

Oh.

Vera spotted him with the mug she had decorated for him — which made her smile — but he wasn't alone. Gatz was with him, though he felt very different from usual. She tilted her head, studied him and the things he carried, and with her foresight, it wasn't that hard to understand what was happening.

Was he leaving?

Her father's question suggested as much, but Vera didn't understand why. Quietly, she stepped forward to join her father, who would be giving her a ride home to spend a few days on Niv Hani, before going back to the Temple. But the ride home wasn't on her mind at the moment.

She was curious about Gatz now.

 

[Gatz Derrevar]

Ship: The Red Night
Weapons:
Tag: Kahlil Noble Vera Noble | Open

"Never thought of you as one to give up."

Gatz sighed. He'd been hoping to sneak out before anyone could stop him. But, honestly, he should have been grateful—not only that Kahlil cared enough to stop by, but that it was Kahlil who'd come to talk and not Valery. He wasn't sure he could have looked Valery in the eye and told her he was quitting. Not after all the effort she'd put into him. Kahlil though... he seemed easier to approach, especially about this.

"I know. It's funny, isn't it? I can take getting shot, stabbed, burned, mauled by an alien tiger on steroids, have acid chew through my leg, and generally suffer fatal wounds every other week just fine," Gatz scoffed at himself, "but apparently studying is my limit."

Gatz Derrevar, infamous smuggler, and survivor of several wounds that should have killed him, felled by a curriculum designed for children. If he wasn't a laughing stock before, he certainly would be once people learned why he left. A twenty-five year old man being outpaced by kids, struggling as a remedial student even with all the help Cora was giving him.

"I just... I can't learn," Gatz didn't know how else to phrase it, "when I met your wife for the first time, she told me I had 'the heart of a Jedi.' But I don't have the mind of one. And Cora has been doing her best to tutor me. Master Serys-Organa has been there every time I've needed something explained to me. But it's like I can't retain it. I'll spend hours with my nose in a textbook, and gleam nothing from it. I feel like I'm trying to stay afloat in the ocean, but I can't even figure out how to tread water."

"Dad?"

Gatz winced as he heard Vera's voice. It was hard enough to be outpaced by children, but now one of them was going to watch him give up on studies that she—half his age—excelled at? He hated how much that stung.

"It's just... at the end of the day, I'm not the kind of person who can be forged into a Jedi Knight. The longer I'm here, the more I'll waste time and resources better spent on someone else."

 

[Allyson Locke]

//: Gatz Derrevar //: Kahlil Noble //: Vera Noble //:

It was a rare occasion that the Corellian found herself wandering the halls, especially at a Jedi Temple. After all the years of being a Jedi, she despised being in the temple and sitting in one place longer than she needed. There was something about the temples that gave her the chills. She wasn't born into the whole Jedi life; it was something that fell into her lap, and she found a home.

Voices echoed down the corridor she was wandering down; it seemed like someone was having a crisis of faith. It made her eyes roll, and she wondered if she had sounded this pathetic when she had hers. At least no one could hear it, and she could handle it alone. Then again, she wasn't used to having the comfort of others, especially after the most recent war. Whoever it was, at least he had someone to talk to - maybe she could ignore the conversation as she drew closer to it.

Allyson chomped on the apple she was eating harder and faster, trying to drown out the belly-aching cries of the Padawan. Every word that she heard echoing down the hallway burned in her stomach. It only took a few strides, but Allyson had made it to where the man and the boy stood along with a child. Allyson looked at the kid and blinked. There were familiar features, but she couldn't put her finger on them.

Her focus was on the kid, who stood in his room defeated. It wasn't her place, and she probably didn't have the words the boy wanted to hear. But she couldn't ignore it anymore, especially with threats looming in the galaxy's dark corridors. This kid could be out there fighting, and knowing her luck, he'd be the one she'd paired up with. Dying wasn't on her agenda, especially to someone's inability to even believe in themselves.

"You should leave then." She started bluntly; unlike her Padawan, she didn't owe this kid anything, and he seemed more muddled than Nir. "You've made up your mind already that you're some waste of time, then leave and stop wasting this kid and her dad's time." She pointed to Kahlil and Vera, "But obviously, there's something still making you linger. If your problem is the book, then do something else. Not everything or everyone can learn the same way; whoever your master is kind of sucks if they couldn't pick up on that." Again, there was no sugarcoating her words, and unknown to her, the man standing in the doorway could probably be the kid's master.

"In my opinion, you should just go because honestly, you're just going to get someone killed, can't even believe in yourself - how are you going to even protect someone?" The Corellian shrugged, "But like I said, something is keeping you here; you've made friends, right? You finally feel like you've found a place you can call home, right? Feels good helping people?" Allyson rambled a bit as she extended a finger to count the items she had listed off.

"Who cares? If you want to be a Jedi, go off and be a Jedi - we're all different and do things differently. Just gotta find your niche, like being a punching bag or something." Allyson paused and looked at the apple core in her hand, "Oh, I forgot, I'm Allyson Locke - sorry for interrupting, my bad."

 

[Sonti Delst]

A heaviness in the air gently brought Sonti's footfalls to a stop. Not one muscle in her leg responded when she tried to lift it off the floor once more to continue walking towards her temporary dorm room. In fact, everything but lingering in the corner's precipice seemed impossible, even breathing, for a long moment. When it was over, fading away as quickly as it had come over her, the Padawan gasped quietly and seized forward with repressed momentum. She reached out a hand and, able to steady herself on the wall, rounded the corner with recovered gracefulness.

In the short time she had been training in the Lesan compound on Corellia, her intuitive capacity for empathy had increased exponentially.

She stopped now, again and of her own volition, studying the scene down the hall before her. Most rules of social etiquette suggested that she go on her own way, but a small pang in the bottom of her heart urged her the intrude, so she approached the group gathering in the entryway of a room with its door open, smiling softly at the man from whom she felt radiating dejectedness: Gatz.

Gatz Derrevar Kahlil Noble Vera Noble Allyson Locke

 

[Kahlil Noble]

Kahlil opened his mouth to say something, only to close it as Allyson spoke up. He chuckled as he glanced to the Shadow and gave her a simple nod. "She's right, you know. If you got it in your head you're not worth the time, then you're not. That mindset isn't doing you or anyone else any favors. Valery reached out and brought you here because she believed you are."

He paused as he glanced to Vera. Gave her a brief smile in turn before hardening his expression as he looked back to Gatz.

"Every time I've met you, you've been sulking about this or that. 'I'm a bad person who doesn't deserve to be better.' 'I'm a waste of space.' 'I'm not worth the resources.' I've been quiet about it, because it's something I wanted you to come to terms with on your own, but you haven't. If you want to be a Jedi, be a Jedi. There are other ways to learn, hell I spent most of my time as a Jedi living in the Bastion making smuggling runs throughout the outer rim, not in any Order, and not with any Master or even someone to help push me forward. You have those people, and every time you sit there and think you're a waste of time, you're spitting in their faces. It's not pity that has them help you. If you weren't capable of being a Jedi, then all of this would amount to getting someone killed, and they don't believe that. So go. Find yourself amongst the stars if you have to, but stop with this pity party."

 

[Gatz Derrevar]

Ship: The Red Night
Weapons:
Tag: Kahlil Noble Vera Noble Sonti Delst Allyson Locke

It was bad enough to have some stranger rip into him when he was struggling, but now even Kahlil was telling him off. Shame burned in Gatz, and he couldn't bring himself to look anyone in their eyes. This was everything he had feared about the prospect of returning to the Order: that no one would accept him. That when he struggled and needed guidance, he'd find none.

What Gatz needed was help. Instead, he was being rushed out the door.

"...So go. Find yourself amongst the stars if you have to, but stop with this pity party."

"I... I understand."

If the Shield of the Jedi was telling him to leave the Order... who was he to stay? How could he, if a Council Member was demanding it of him? The choice had just been made for him, and though every fiber of his being wanted to rebel, Gatz instead lowered his gaze to the ground and slung his bag over his shoulder.

Some small part of him seethed: that he could spend the last year throwing himself in harms way, nearly dying every other week in an attempt to do better, and yet still be rejected and tossed out. Some part of him raged that the choice had just been taken from him, and now he was being ushered out instead of it being his own choice.

But he strangled those angers and buried them. What good came of anger? Nothing. He'd known that even before coming back to the Order.

"Excuse me," Gatz spoke quietly, as he tried to shuffle out of the room.

He really had wanted to be a Jedi.

 

[Vera Noble]

Coruscant

​

Tag: Gatz Derrevar Allyson Locke Kahlil Noble Sonti Delst

Oh hey, that was Allyson Locke . Mom had mentioned her before, when she talked about her time with the Shadows, and-

Vera's thought process stopped abruptly when the woman addressed Gatz rather bluntly, and her father was quick to add to it. Instinctively, the teenager stepped just a little closer to her Dad and remained completely silent. She knew Gatz, of course, but she wasn't aware of his troubles. Mom worked with and helped lots of people, but she wasn't one to share someone else's personal struggles unless it was necessary.

Usually, that meant sharing it just with Dad or the Council.

What she heard now suggested a more serious obstacle in his life — his path as a Jedi — and she wondered what route he'd take. Mom and many other Jedi would always help, but it sounded like he had already given up. Maybe some time to figure things out would be better? He wouldn't be the first Jedi to take time away to find oneself.

The arrival of Sonti Delst pulled her thoughts away, and Vera simply offered her a little smile. She hadn't seen her before, but she must be a little overwhelmed walking into this scene.