Private Sleepless Nights

[Gatz Derrevar]

Ship: The Red Night
Weapons:
Tag: Rik Perris

Gatz had promised Corazona von Ascania that the long nights would end. He'd meant those words. But his nightmares wouldn't let him rest.

It was late, again. And he was up, again. Sleep had become fruitless, so Gatz found himself outside his room, wandering the halls. Even now, over a month after returning to the Order, he still felt a sense of unease within the walls of the Jedi Temple. This place had been home once—his first home even. But trauma had a way of warping the familiar, and twisting it into the stuff of nightmares.

The Jedi Temple would always remind him of Riggs, and the Jedi Shadow who'd murdered him. For Gatz, this was not a place of safety and shelter, and it never would be. He was most comfortable, oddly enough, at Valery Noble 's old Temple on New Cov. But it was largely empty, and it simply wasn't possible for Gatz to receive the help and training he needed all the way out there. Here, lessons were only a few floors away, not half a galaxy.

And so, as much as the Jedi Temple made his skin crawl, he was stuck here for the foreseeable future. He wasn't happy about that—hell he wasn't happy with returning to the Order at all, not with the way he was struggling—but this was the future he'd chosen for himself. He'd known it wasn't going to be all sunshine and rainbows.

Gatz decided that dwelling on that was pointless. He hadn't returned to be happy. He'd returned because it meant better facilitating the process of helping others.

At some point, Gatz stopped meandering down the halls, and found himself looking out a window down at Coruscant's cityscape below. It reminded him of Nar Shaddaa in a way, only cleaner up top. Down below, though, Gatz knew it was as rotten as the Smuggler's Moon. And here they were, the Jedi, sitting above it all in a palace.

That irked him. Greatly. It was just another reason he hated the Jedi Temple. It made him wonder if he should just relocate to Master Amani Serys 's enclave full time. He'd only visited once, but it felt like the right place to be. He could find peace there, and Gatz wasn't sure that he'd ever truly find it here.

Or maybe he was just exhausted, and exaggerating his problems.

 

[Rik Perris]

Location: New Jedi Temple - Senate District - Coruscant
Equipment: Lightsaber
Tag: Gatz Derrevar

Gatz wasn’t the only one traversing the corridors of the temple at this time of night; this late hour was normal for the Corellian, owing to years spent conducting many operations under the cover of darkness. Regardless of any time differences between Galactic City - the name of the dense ecumenopolis that spanned the entirety of Coruscant - and the countless former imperial worlds he had set boots on for the better part of a decade, lashing himself to waking before the first rays of daylight was an arduous task.

This had been easier, somehow, when he was a padawan.

It was all part and parcel of attempting to reintegrate himself with the Order and establishing a routine that was meant to include, among other things, mentoring other Jedi. Padawans in particular. Though he’d managed personnel, adult personnel, providing guidance to teenagers that were still finding who they were and their place in life, even within the context of the Jedi, would be a different thing altogether. Now after more than a month of applying himself to other tasks and the resumption of his own training - Knights still had plenty they could learn - he had his first assignment in that vein, and it was far more than just mentoring fresh-faced younger Jedi.

For some reason, Valery Noble felt him well-matched to the task, and he had no real reason to not trust her judgement when it came to Jedi matters. He had to believe that the person invested as Grandmaster knew what they were doing. Had to give the Order and its people the benefit of the doubt until such a time - if it came to pass - that he was given reason not to. She had affirmed that things were different, that she and others had put in the time to fix what had so severely tainted the Order’s reputation in the midst of the last war, and he’d chosen to take her at her word.

He didn’t know her by reputation, coming into this; he’d had to rely on his own judgement. That was all he had with anyone, as he forged new connections in this new phase of his life, some of which carried their own challenges in trying to make more of them than a cursory acquaintance. Such as Ivalyn Yvarro , who inspired both unfettered smiles and just as many pensive moments when his thoughts drifted in her direction, or a private message pulled him there. Such as Gatz Derrevar, who he found this night peering out a window into the cityscape below and just as sleepless. Though he’d wager the matters that weighed on each of them differed.

“Bleak,” he offered, walking up to the same window, “and cold; quite austere, isn’t it?”

Rik wasn’t sure he could ever see the appeal of living here.

 

[Gatz Derrevar]

Ship: The Red Night
Weapons:
Tag: Rik Perris

Gatz heard the footsteps approaching him, but continued his vigil. Coruscant, as much as it bothered him, did have a sort of beauty when viewing the top level of the world at night. It was a city that never slept; a city where the traffic didn't even slow down in the wee hours of the morning. It shouldn't have surprised him: between his first nine years here, and the six years he'd spent on Nar Shaddaa, ecumenopolises were basically home to him. As rotten as the core as they all were, durasteel was more comforting to him than nature.

But that rot had a stench to it that Gatz could no longer ignore.

It was only when Rik spoke that Gatz turned his head to his fellow man. He was a little surprised, but worked not to show it. It wasn't that Gatz thought he was the only person up this late, but he hadn't expected to run into someone he knew. At least, not without banging on their door and waking them up in the middle of the night.

“Bleak,” he offered, walking up to the same window, “and cold; quite austere, isn’t it?”

"And rotten, below the surface level." Gatz added, "just a bad as Nar Shaddaa. A billion sentients below the surface, all suffering and in need. I wonder if the Council even realizes that, as they sit up in their ivory tower overlooking all of us."

This was a different council than the one that had presided over his leaving, Gatz knew. There were three people on the Council that he respected greatly. But all three of those people—Kahlil, Valery, and Master Serys-Organa—held either title, wealth, or both. He wondered if any of them gave the people of this world more than a passing thought.