Shame

[Talia]

https://youtu.be/sZ5azkZzMRI


A wrapped fist cracked against the bag, followed swiftly by another. Talia was on the balls of her feet, her fight with the training bag filling the hall with noise that reverberated beyond its walls. Kuar’s cavern city was still, even with the exiles moving in its vastness drowned them into nothing. Sweat beaded on her forehead, as she dove into the exercise.

The eight year old girl crashed into the dirt, lip bleeding, eyes welling with tears of pain. “No tears.” he said, a warning finger jabbing at her chest. “You got cocky, you paid the price. On your feet ad’ika.” She did as she was told collecting the wooden staff that had been struck. Suddenly she was in the dirt again, legs swiped out from under her. “Too slow. Get up.” She scrambled to her feet, with a cry of anger and a wild swing. The staff was twisted out of her fingers, something solid hit her chest. Her father’s staff came swinging in for a killing blow but was stopped inches from her face with the deafening clack of wood on wood. She opened the eyes she’d shut in fear of the blow to see Sintas standing over her. “She’s had enough, Buir.”​

The force swelled around her, filling her limbs with fire, the strikes became harder, and faster. Difficult to track with the naked eye but still controlled, their full strength pulled back. Talia saw nothing, heard nothing and felt only the sting of old memories and the ebb and flow of the force.

Sixteen years old, a woman in her own rights and in the rights of the people that had adopted her. Talia dabbed at the split in Sintas’s cheek with a cloth. He winced and slapped her hand away. “Oh don’t be such a baby, ori’vod. I have to clean it before I can stitch it.” ​

​

“Your damn fault I got it anyway.”​

​

“I don’t remember asking for you to jump in and save my honour.”​

​

“Little shid Vizsla had it coming. You shouldn’t have been on their land anyway. What were you doing there?”​

​

Talia’s cheeks flushed pink. She’d been meeting a boy, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. “Their land? Since when does it matter who owns what land. We’re supposed to be one people. All this clan rivalry is the last thing we need with the Sith Empire on our doorstep. Why were you even following me?”​

​

“So I could shoot the boy that’s been making passes at you all week.” She seized his chin and dabbed the cut harder the necessary out if spite. He swore and caught her wrists, recognising the anger in those eyes glittering eyes. “Udesii Tal’ika...udesii. Ni ceta.” he brushed a lock of amber hair from her face. “N'eparavu takisit.” he tugged her into a hug. She might have fallen for it if not for the grin on his face.​

So many fights with her brother, but always he had been there, always he had protected her until she removed herself to places where he couldn’t, combining the skills of the veteran and the hunter that had moulded her. The Buirs that had adopted the lost child and the brother that had accepted her without question, that had been her family, the centre point in her universe that she always came back to. Emotion tightened her chest but she didn’t relent her assault on the bag, even as a small split appeared and sand began to trickle slowly out. Sintas was front and centre in her mind.

The cybernetic limb snatched her legs out from under her, dumping her into the blood stained snow. She recognised what was coming next, their father had done it a hundred times before. She caught the beskad swinging for her head on the light-shield that snapped into existence, her own blade punching up into his abdomen. Feet followed the blow as she retracted the blade pushing him away from her and getting back to her feet. “Ori’vod….Sintas...gedet’ye, gev.” Her world shattered in the blood curdling scream he’d replied with.​

Anger and pain rippled through her, and she lost control with a cry of despair. The power of her strike splits the bag and tore the chains from the anchors. It crashed against the wall shattering loose tiles from the ceiling and wall around it, leaving Talia standing alone, dressed down in slacks and a crop top, chest heaving. She bent over with a soft curse, and rested her hands on her thighs, wrestling with the well of emotion that constricted her chest. Tears blurred her vision.


Breathe Talia. It’ll pass.


She sank to her knees.

“...Ni ceta, Sintas. Ni ceta. Ori’vod, i warned you. I begged you. You di’kut. Ni ceta.”​

Just breathe.​

 

[Cato Fett]

There came a scent of warm, sour wine and a heavy towel was laid across the bare of her shoulders. Gloved hands deposited a small-necked porcelain bottle beside a pair of wide-brimmed drinking plates, a deep bowl of hot and seasoned rice, and green cha in an equally fine, pale serving cup simmered to overcome the heat of the long gymnast hall and lend taste against the acrid, stale backwash that stuck in the throat with every breathe. Cato sat across from her and the offering of refreshment, in short trousers and a tied-sleeve dogi jacket. Wooden fighting swords were knotted across his hip with a tightly wound sash. His left-hand, a worn, plated prosthetic attachment, glared ugly and obviously from his elbow. Harness straps showed over his collarbone.

After a pause listening to Talia’s weighty exhales, Cato said. “…When they reach a certain maturity, the Epar snakes dig deep into the mantle. Some do not rise for years. Very deep, yes. But not so deep or burdensome as what you wear on your brow. Will you take lunch with me?”

[member="Talia Fett"]

 

[Talia]

So lost in her own world, she'd not even known Cato was there, until the towel dropped over her shoulders. Talia couldn't find words to greet him, nor the strength to look him in the eyes. She closed her eyes, tears escaping under the pressure, but the rest kept at bay. Only just.

She looked up at him as he spoke, swallowing hard against the lump in her throat, blinking more than was necessary to keep it all at bay. What the feth was an Epar snake? Eyes dropped to the small lunch, the smell wafting up her nose. Talia made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob and gave a small shake of her head in mild disbelief. Another deep breath, she closed her eyes, taking the corner of the towel he'd given her to wipe her face.

Exhale and the tension easy enough from her chest for her to find words. "Thank you." she accepted he voice tight, sliding from her knees to sit cross legged. "How long have you been in here?"

[member="Cato Fett"]

 

[Cato Fett]

“Only now,” He said. “I thought you’d take a restorative.”

They were committed to mindfully observing protocol, Cato’s position more than a little precarious, having interrupted Talia’s explicit privacy and witnessing her momentary loss of face. By personal right, she could expel him from the gymnasium house or offer up challenge to repay the slight. Honour demanded mollification. Talia’s state took precedence, Cato at her mercy, to be insulted or dismissed without the privilege of reprisal. His face was serene nonchalance; he’d not detected a rending force broiling inside the training bleachers, not the screens, the seismic reports disturbing the subterranean block, and not the tear of broken notes clenching her throat and making every demand on her heart to give vent. Cato poured the sweet and sour wine into one of the immaculate serving bowls, tipping a last drop, the motion steady and easing.

“Were you practicing?” He asked, with equal nonchalance. An in and a way out; Talia had option to redirect conversation as she pleased. I saw nothing, heard nothing, therefore witnessed nothing, and your face is intact as it always has been and you needn’t feel embarrassed for the moment. Cato poured his own cup and sipped.

[member="Talia Fett"]

 

[Talia]

Talia looked down at her hands, the wrapping stained with blood. "Kriff." She muttered. She'd not even felt the pain, even now it seemed not to hurt, like her hands weren't her own. "You don't have to do that Cato." She said softly, slowly undoing the wrap on one hand.q

"I've nothing to hide from you." She glanced up at him with a slight smile, tainted with sorrow. "And no, i wasn't practicing, just...trying to stave off inner demons. Doesn't work as well as a real fight, you mind has time to wander when you've not got someone hitting back."

She dropped the cloth behind her away from their food and flexed her fingers, before working on the next one, deposting the cloth the same before collecting the cuo of wine he'd produced and taking a sip. Flavours danced across her tongue, a sublte heat followed its path as she swallowed it.

"Do you ever feel like you've lost your way?"

[member="Cato Fett"]

 

[Cato Fett]

“Relentlessly,” He said. “’Do I fulfil the Resol’nare? Are the tenets writ upon my heart? Have I seen to my duty and to my honour? Do I bring honour to my friends, my family, to my ancestors? Have I worked to leave my descendants a worthwhile inheritance? Do I meet the measure of others?’ Or…”

Cato’s single eye bored through the fusty and hard air into Talia. A tremble shook the hanging dust motes though he’d not shifted, holding still against his wine-cup. Noonday heat cooked through the gymnasium rafters. “Or have I failed?” Cato went on. “And if I have, what then? How do I retake the path? How do I set things right? The questions close in like a blizzard at times. Blinding, cutting at you like razors, disorienting you from the truth you seek. You catch yourself debating with your own conscience. Self-examination gives way to self-doubt.

“More questions,” He said, slurping the wine down, refilling his cup. “Like this: why do you feel lost?”

[member="Talia Fett"]

 

[Talia]

Talia took a long moment to reply, taking gulp of wine to organise her words. Not daring to look at him as she spoke, too afraid of what she might see.

"I fought for Mia Monroe. I denied the Mand'alor who won the mantle fair and square. I killed dozens of my own clan in a war that should never have happened" she made herself look up, meet Cato's one eyed gaze. "I killed Sintas."

Tears blurred her vision then, saying it out loud made it all the more real, made the pain that much worse. She set the cup down, unable to hold it steady. "I killed my own brother, fighting for a mad woman. And to make matter worse? Less than a week ago I swore an oath to protect the very man who's action killed my parents, and started this goddamn war."

She wiped the tears away, angrily. "I can't see the Resol'nare anymore. All I've left of it is my armour and our tongue. I am..." she couldn't say it. Couldn't bring herself to form the words on her tongue.

[member="Cato Fett"]

 

[Cato Fett]

Rage, the weight of personal shame, swam with the heat and the gymnasium gypsum dust. Her countenance barely kept her pain leashed, distress speaking through twitches of muscle-spasm in her shoulders and diaphragm. Sobs threatened her voice. She’d no wish to reveal tears before company, certainly not in his. Cato diverted his glance to the small porcelain bottle, wondered what wisdom he might glean from the brushed lilies painted up its stem-neck. He willed his senses to fathom sagacity out of Nothingness, exhaling out vestiges of self until empathy replaced his ego. They regarded one another over the meagre food and the scent of rice-wine.

Cato suddenly stood, nearly upsetting the bowls and wine-plates. “Come.”

His hands deftly tied loose silk ropes about his jacket sleeves until they formed a harness keeping the fabric from catching on his elbows. He drew the long bamboo training sword from his sash and played with its weight. It ran about him, in liquid orbitals, pausing outstretched at some unseen foe. That gimlet eye of his beckoned her to the sparring floor. Cato waved the blunt sword-point at the ruined punchbag and crane.

“You’ll find no answers in an opponent who doesn’t reply. I can speak at you, Talia. Or I can speak with you,” He said, the drew a line through the gymnasium sand. “Your spirit is not absent. Only exhausted. We’ll invigorate it. Beginning with this: it was no dishonour to fight as you did. To kill as you did. You are not responsible for their destinies. You are letting remorse destroy your harmony.”

[member="Talia Fett"]

 

[Talia]

His movements were fluid, well practised, both beautiful and deadly. Under different circumstances she might have smiled at that, but all she could see now was an opponent worthy of her time.

"Yes," she retorted getting to her feet. "It was." She padded away from him to a rack on the wall. The training weapons here were covered with a fine coat of dust. Save one. "If the split was even, if the clan divided straight down the middle, then maybe you'd have a point. Maybe my fight would have been honourable." Her own training sword was shorter, designed to be wielded with one hand and normally a shield. But she'd no shield to practice with.

It rolled in her hand as she moved back across the room, its weight familiar. "There was only a handful of us." The tears were gone, shut away in an instant, cold anger and self loathing seemed to replace them. "Paint it with whatever name you like, destiny, fate, it doesn't matter." She planted herself on the other side of the line. "At its root, I still betrayed my clan and killed my brother."

She paused. "Don't pull your punches."

[member="Cato Fett"]

 

[Cato Fett]

Earth shifted out from beneath his feet. Cato led in, poking his sword’s reach past Talia’s short-blade, feinting into a baiting withdraw. Wood struck on tempered bamboo, weapons chasing for openings, the tempo curt and arrhythmic. He was paced back and nearly fenced into a far corner of the gymnast grounds, taking a smart cut to his shoulder that was already welting under the cloth. Cato rallied, replying with a curt stroke across her belly and stepping round to whack the blunt edge over her shoulder blades. Swordplay needled at her, catching her knuckles and elbows with stinging replies. He warded off a deft cut-and-thrust blend before he felt his jaw smart. Talia’s pommel receded, a patina of carmine soaking into the cracked wood whorls.

“So, the pain’s unbearable?” Cato said, hocking blood onto the sand. “The shame is too great? Then what dissuades you? Is suicide too ferocious? Certainly brave enough to shame me with your self-pity!”

The kata that came on was inexplicably vicious, slamming a cyclone-hail of wrenching strikes into Talia’s guard. “Did they not choose? Did you not choose? Do you deny Sintas the honour of his passing? That it was you and not a stranger? Tell me! And tell me: what makes Ra Vizsla a man worth agonizing over! I hear nothing but my cousin’s wailing!”

[member="Talia Fett"]

 

[Talia]

She was hard pressed to keep his strikes at bay, the deafening clack of their training blades ringing in her ears as he pushed her back, his words stung as much as the sharp thwack that caught her upper thigh, she cursed, smacking his sword away from her and back peddling with a slight limp, trying to put some distance between them, but he followed her. Unrelenting in his attack of her psych and herself.

Had she not sneered at Ijaat for his self pity? Was it that she had killed Sintas? No it was not. It wasn't the death itself. She'd not deny him his honour. His face swam before her, contorted with hate and rage. He died in her arms with that same expression. The memory distracted her, she felt the blade smarted from her fingers with a strike that rose and angry welt across the inside of her arm. A gasp of pain and Cato's sword came to rest at her neck.

"He hated me." her chest rose and fell with heavy breaths. "He died in my arms with nothing but hate in his eyes for me. For the sister he'd protected and loved."

A beat.

"I don't give a feth about Ra."

[member="Cato Fett"]

 

[Cato Fett]

“Then the matter of his office is settled.”

His foot flicked and tossed the short-sword across the dirt to her reach. Cato had stood away, shoulders dangerously turned and sword aside, out of guard. Vulnerable to a punitive blow, or any action Talia’s wits could suggest. His head turned, eyepatch glaring black, looking for a moment like a grinning skull. Dust settled, following the shades and ramps of shadow and light in the air.

“For Sintas, what might I say that will convince you? You prefer staying convinced of your culpability in his death. His rage and pain has infected you. No amount of chat or deliberation will shift you, otherwise I’d have stayed on the floor. What is it you want, Talia? Absolvement? His forgiveness? Have you forgotten?” He turned slightly.

“…This is the life we chose. The life we lead,” Cato said. “So sorry, perhaps Sintas died a fool for hating you.”

[member="Talia Fett"]

 

[Talia]

Talia didn't believe for a moment that was was vulnerable. She hooked her toes under her sword and kicked it up high enough for her to catch. She wasn't about to bend and expose herself for another attack. She inspected the bruise rising rapidly on the inside of her arm, not quite able to meet the glance from his eye. She still kept him in her peripherals, just incase he launched an attack.

"Can't seek forgiveness from a dead man." she retorted. The worst of it all? She'd not seen his pyre, not said her farewells. She along with hundreds of others had been given a choice. Stay and bend the knee. Or leave.

Leave and never return.

So perhaps it was closure she sought? How could she get that? The sword rolled in her grasp, and she fixed her stance, blade resting on opposing wrist. Gorramit she wished she had her shield. The fight was helping order her thoughts, to push beyond the irrationality of her emotions and see something else. A solution? Maybe not that far, but it was close.

"Again." she called him to attack.

[member="Cato Fett"]

 

[Cato Fett]

He offered a nod before bursting into staccato cuts, testing the anchor of their footwork. The effort launched them out of reprieve. Dialogue faded to body language, reading for the minute telegraphs, Cato’s swordplay catching and binding the smooth edge of her short-blade while her offenses drove to break his guard and draw in for close-quarter fighting. His answer was to simply ‘half-sword’, throttling a hand up the blade and holding fast. Blade became half-stave. For a torturous half-minute, they locked into a brutish grapple, swaying on the balls of their feet as Talia fought to twist the sword from his grasp while he fended off her sword-end from jabbing under his ribs.

Both went sprawling from an ill-timed trip. His or hers was anyone’s guess. Sword and blade rattled out of reach, combat resetting to hand-to-hand. Cato felt himself shunted back and skidding, rolling over his shoulders to perform a neat spring off his toes. Her blows surged in; mixture of Mando’ade styled kick-boxing and throws modified for armoured opponents, Talia’s speed and power astonishing to behold. Cato was no less economical as he optioned between tall stances and hunched in guards, employing watered-down Noghri stava and tempered old-style jujutsu. He caught her fist on his wrist, rolled her arm aside, jamming his elbow in against her neck. Took a knee to the gut in reply, stepping out to avoid her heels jamming down on the arches of his feet.

“Better than a silent bag, neh?”

[member="Talia Fett"]

 

[Talia]

Talia's eyes glinted with a touch of delight, amusement even, betraying her enjoyment of the fight. This was what she did best, this was what she lived for. That, and the hunt. The anticipation of the final moments of her prey, because beneath it all, beneath the self doubt, beneath the tightly knit rules that she lived by, Talia was an animal.

"Elek." she breathed. Her strikes kept coming, looking for the gap in his defences, to put him down.

She feigned a snap kick at his leg, passing by it and hooking her foot behind his knee instead, one hand found its way between his defence snapping into his sternum with far more force than she intended.

[member="Cato Fett"]

 

[Cato Fett]

He twisted like a reed in the storm, bending with Talia’s fulcrum, pitching the core of his physical gravity back. However, his arms were snatched and knotted around her shoulders and throat, both feet heeling into the soft flesh behind her knee-caps. Cato met hard with the earth and tugged his cousin down with him. There was a satisfying ‘Whup!?’, a brief glimmer of her feet slipping free and turning a crescent of pebbles through the air.

Again, there was action and counter-action, the pair battling to dominate the dusty floor. Cato joint-locked her down the length of an arm, Talia spearing her knuckles into his diaphragm, his rejoinder smacking the space between her eyes with deceptively minute power, her strength again rearing, walloping him off her shoulder. He tumbled, balled, rolled until his heels arrested momentum and again stood. She was like a stem of Concordian cedar: tall, proud, unyielding, willing the elements to rip her out by the root before ever bowing, hardy, and so very in the Mandalorian spirit. Cato was a study in Tao: weightless yet anchored, water and steel, powerful but measured.

He met her blows, not minding where her knuckles cut down his cheek. They barred into a round of offensive capability versus deflection; fists, flat chops, high knees, and foot contact versus a liquid shield of almost careless interceptions, guards, and redirections. Footwork was practiced, lines of attack dissected and critiqued. All wordless. Kinetic spirit charged the dusty air with static. Bruising was already showing on his forearm and shins, the prosthetic gauntlet scuffed with chipping and clawed paint.

Suddenly, Cato was absent. Ducking under her arms and bounding out of reach, to the centre of the gymnasium floor, as his toes just barely touched at the earth and gritty dust. “Kandosii’la!”

[member="Talia Fett"]

 

[Talia]

Cato's movements were seamless, ever shifting and soft, but incredibly powerful. He pushed her limits, tested every defence and offence she had for him. It was both refreshing and immensely infuriating - a sure sign that this was exactly what she had needed. She couldn't help but laugh as he slipped under her arm and away.

"You sound surprised." she mocked bending to rest her hands on her knees and catch her breath while they had distance. "I know my strengths, fighting was always one of them. Partaylir?"

She shook her head and stood upright padding over to him. "You're like a river, not only do you move like one, but you're impossible to stop once you get going. Luubid. I'm done." She squeezed a shoulder as she passed him and flopped back down to where he'd brought food and laid back on the sandy floor, letting her eyes close. She relished in the sound of blood rushing past her ears, int eh way her heart snapped against her chest and, as the adrenaline wore away, in each throbbing bruise and stinging cut.

[member="Cato Fett"]

 

[Cato Fett]

The rice-wine helped at dulling the sting’s edge, Cato sitting across from Talia with the bottle, bowls, and plates still settled and unaffected. He sipped twice, paused for thought and savour, refilling his squat drinking plate. Fatigue blanketed his limbs and weighed on his musculature like lead. Later, he would bathe and see the medicae. At worst, a stitch or three would be required to close up the worst of the gashes taken in their bouts. The best he could expect were numbing topical rubs, bacta poultices for contusions and pronounced swelling. An itch throbbed in his blood; still wanting for the weight and balance of the bamboo blades.

“…It was good to spar,” He said, when it was no longer impolite to break the quiet. “And you, Talia. You’ve natural cunning and intuitiveness. Adaptation, improvisation. You teach and learn with the same motion, uncompromising. It was an honour.”

He laid his hands out, knees bent, bowing until his forehead touched with the earth and held the pose for a worthy second. And then rose, cleaning off his face of speckles and sweat, taking up another cup of wine. “…It’s not Mando’ade custom to bow. We nod, shrug, give voice, but never bow. It’s too much to ask each other for customary respect. But it is my custom; I’ve chosen it to be. …I’m sorry if our fighting did not provide you with answers. The Resol’nare is many things.”

The cups, bowls, and utensils were rearranged under his touch. Porcelain slid over granite and lent a kind of visceral punctuation. “It is instruction. It is mandate. It is guidance. But it is not the end to learning for a Mandalorian, only the beginning. Its simplicity lays the foundations for our people to continue growing. If your heart is still troubled, Talia, I suggest travel. Meet others. Build connections. Really take advantage of your schooling to adventure like only a Mando can. You owe it to yourself to make peace with your decisions, and to accept that you are not less for it. Your honour can only be questioned by those who are lacking.

“…You’ve certainly opened my eyes to a few things too.”

[member="Talia Fett"]