Public Starved for Something Sweet

[Braze]

Braze rested against the front steps of the ancient Jedi Enclave on Dantooine, shoulders tipped back against weathered stone warmed by the afternoon sun.

The place was old and hushed… wind combing through the tall grass, insects humming somewhere beyond the low walls. It felt almost improper that he sat there with a berry-flavored hard fizz in hand, condensation slipping along the dark glass and dampening his fingers. He lifted the bottle toward the light, turning it slowly; red liquid caught the sun and burned jewel-bright before fading again. He watched it as though it might offer an answer.

He drank quaffing it once more...

The sweetness rushed first thick, and syrupy, followed by the bite at the back of his throat. It should have been indulgent. It should have satisfied something...It didn’t.

His mouth twisted faintly, more annoyed than wounded. He tipped the bottle again, longer this time, as if daring it to do better. The wind pressed through his hair; somewhere beyond the courtyard a kath hound called once, then fell quiet.

“Ridiculous,” he muttered to no one in particular.

He eased himself back until he lay flat on the stone just behind the top step, one arm folded beneath his head, the other resting the bottle against his chest. Above him the sky stretched wide and unbroken, blue without interruption… too open, too empty... and far too quiet.

He exhaled slowly.

Something was off.... A restlessness beneath his ribs, sharp and impatient. He shifted, scowling at the horizon as though it had personally inconvenienced him. The drink rolled loosely between his fingers; he stared at it, then away again.

It wasn’t the enclave.... It wasn’t the quiet....It was just… something felt like it was missing.

 

[Eloise Dinn]

"Well well, look who it is," Eloise said, spotting Braze's unmistakable white hair as she turned the corner. "Fancy finding you here."

Not at the Naboo Temple, but at the ruins of the ancient Dantooine Jedi Enclave, no less. She had come here to help with the establishment of a new enclave some miles away. As her time there drew to its inevitable conclusion, the workers had insisted she check out the ruins of the old enclave. It was a sight to behold, they said, which made her expect a tourist trap. Instead, she had found the ruins more than lived up to their legend, and there weren't any crowds of curious onlookers to be found.

Except for Braze. It was some weeks since the conclave and the launch of Jasper's initiative. Since he hadn't bothered to defend himself against her accusations and had avoided interacting with her ever since, Eloise still thought of Braze as a traitor who had been let off far too easily. But she didn't lead with that. She was weary of quarreling with her fellow Jedi.

Crossing her arms over her chest, she asked, "What are you doing here, Braze?"

Braze​

 

[Braze]

​

The pale young man was startled at the voice, then recognized it a heartbeat later. He pushed himself upright on the stone steps, blinking at Eloise with that unguarded look he so rarely allowed anyone to see. His mental shields, usually so carefully tended, lay lowered, thinned to gauze.

He set the glass bottle aside with deliberate care, the faint tap and grind of glass against stone echoing down toward the water.

What was he doing here?

That was a fair question… and one he wasn’t certain he could answer. Not honestly. Not in this moment.

He had thought this might be a better setting to begin The Trial of Two. Presently, Leos was tasked with gathering a crystal of his own, taking those first careful steps toward crafting a saber. It felt fitting to begin such a path somewhere removed from noise and expectation.

It had been some time since his self-exile prior to the trial, wandering places like Ossus, and the Ruins of the Great Jedi Library, where he had encountered The Smallest Presence stirring in the Force. Even members of the New Jedi Order had been led there, hoping to deliver his rightful Comeuppance and the following Confrontation that lead to his Trial.

Other temples followed… half-forgotten sanctuaries, hollowed spires, silent halls that remembered older prayers than any living Jedi.

But here... on Dantooine was where he had found A wildflower in winter. This place felt different than the others in a manner of solitude...

More suited, perhaps, to building quiet training grounds. To safeguarding artifacts and holocrons far from grasping hands. A secluded point in the galaxy where the current of the Force moved softly, and few would think to search for him, or the young lad who had begun calling him Teacher.

Braze’s fingers curled loosely against the step beside him.

“Some places,” he said at last, voice low, “don’t demand anything of you.... They simply… allow you to begin again.” He murmured in vague ominous reply to her her words coming out slightly slurred. He had after all been both Jedi Temple Guard, and Shadow, having started a double edged life as a knight. Old Temples had been often home for him throughout his travels as he gathered remnants and continued his efforts at imparting all he knew of the jedi to Leos and now even Dirk ...

He searched his person and held up an Ossus Codex Key towards her with a feebly wabbled hand. "I'm a wandering grounds keeper of sorts... There's much to be done... and this place feels less observed by enemies presently...." he mused half cognizant of what exactly he was saying. He must have seemed pathetic to Eloise Dinn being strewn out and drunk on the steps of an old temple such as this, perhapps wallowing in some form of self pity.

 

[Eloise Dinn]

Braze's initial answer to her question was... vague, to say the least. To Eloise's biased ears, at best it seemed like he was trying too hard to sound deep. At worst, it might be some sort of commentary related to her being judgmental of him. She suppressed a sigh. What did she expect?

Well, to tell the truth, this chance meeting seemed like as good an opportunity as any to confront him one-on-one about Coruscant. Give him a chance to explain his side of the story without the added pressures of the conclave.

But then, as he kept talking, she started to pick up on signs she hadn't noticed when she first saw him sitting there. The slouched posture, so unlike a poised Jedi. The rambling and slightly slurred speech. The empty bottle next to him. She squinted at the label, recognizing it as a brand of hard soda. Booze.

Is he drunk? she wondered, stunned at the idea. She flashed back to when she had made fun of the tame, family friendly holos he had brought to a slumber party back when they were kids. Now here he was, babbling philosophically about being a spiritual groundskeeper or something. Braze just... didn't seem like the type to imbibe at all, let alone indulge to excess - although if one bottle was all it took to get him hammered, that was pretty funny. She supposed the lure of intoxication could catch just about anyone, especially if they were at their lowest point. Given what she thought she knew about his activities on Coruscant, it seemed a fair guess that was the case.

"You seem like you're going through some shit," Eloise muttered. "As someone who's always going through some type of shit, I can confidently say that misery loves company. Got any more of those?" She jerked her chin at the empty bottle.

Braze​

 

[Braze]

He tilted his head and shifted back, the world smearing at the edges as though he were looking through water. He nodded slowly, then rolled onto his side with a faint sound of discomfort.

A backpack rested nearby. He dragged it closer and fumbled with the top zipper, easing it open to reveal it was packed solid with ice and several glass bottles nestled inside. He pulled one free, dark violet in hue with a subtle red undertone, and held it out in her direction.

Among the ice sat a small container of cut fruits, tucked between the bottles. The bag itself had some sort of specialized lining, insulated to preserve the chill.

“Yeah… that’s accurate. I’ve a few left.”

He shifted forward into a hunched posture, wrapping his arms loosely around his knees. Lowering his head, he let it rest against his shoulder as he watched her for a long moment before answering with a question of his own.

“Why… are you here?”

He hadn’t expected to run into her in an old temple like this. The thought lingered in his gaze.

Eloise Dinn

 

[Eloise Dinn]

Eloise watched with one eyebrow raised as Braze struggled to roll over and open his cooler. She took the bottle he offered her, already assuming based on the purple color that it was jogan fruit flavored. She usually preferred namana flavored everything, but whatever. Beggars can't be choosers.

Yanking the top off, she raised the bottle to her lips and took a sip, wincing as it went down. "That's got a kick," she sputtered. No wonder Braze was plastered. Despite the heavy alcoholic taste, she took another longer swig. Then another.

"They're building a new Jedi Enclave down there," she replied, pointing to the southwest. "I was helping out. Mostly doing a lot of heavy lifting, pushing carts, that sort of thing. I'm getting paid to do it, which is nice." Most Jedi duties weren't compensated. "Certainly helps to make the pain in my legs and back seem not so bad."

She took another sip, then added, "I saw you and figured we should talk. I assume you've already made up your mind about me, and I admit I've pretty much made up my mind about you. But I will say that I am more reasonable than I appear. So..." She licked the syrupy aftertaste of the fizz off her lips, staring at Braze's pale face. "I want to know what really happened on Coruscant. Did you betray the Alliance and the Jedi, or what?"

Braze​

 

[Braze]

The bottle was ice cold and carried a small warning along the bottom, if Eloise cared to read it. The pale, slight creature that was Braze was thoroughly crossfaded from his drink.

The Event Horizon versions of the Star-Dew Beverage were deceptively sweet—blended with B-vitamins, caffeine, botanical extracts, and a generous amount of alcohol. It made for a stimulating, dangerous sort of indulgence.

Braze tried to follow what she was explaining, doing his best to answer his own question. More enclaves were always a good thing, in his opinion… more places to retreat to if needed.

“Funds are pretty important to most projects…” he mused.

“Mnnn… people change… for better and for worse…” he slurred, letting himself sink back against the stone, gaze drifting toward the sky above as his shoulders slackened.

A pained look crossed his features when she asked what had happened. He frowned, recalling his venture under Okuma Milogen ’s stewardship.

“It wasn’t supposed to… happen that way,” he murmured, no longer filtering his thoughts. His inhibitions were nowhere to be found as memory rose unrestrained, of watching Loomi brought down before him while he led Okuma to the library to secure the information he sought during the attack.

Braze dragged his hands over his face, rubbing at his eyes. His voice turned rough, and croaky as it tightened.

“I didn’t want to do… any of that…” he mewled, shoulders folding inward as his feet curled toward one another.

His empathic sense, usually compressed beneath immense mental pressure, now spilled outward unchecked. Sorrow, regret, guilt, unease, they poured from him in waves, easily felt through the Force, radiating from him like a tide that would not recede.

“What else was I supposed to do?” he muttered, perhaps forgetting Eloise was there at all. It sounded less like an answer and more like an argument with someone unseen. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone… I was—I was afraid of what else he’d make me do…”

He turned onto his side, arms wrapping around himself as he rested his head against the cold stone, knees drawn upward.

This was nothing like his interaction with Connel Vanagor

“I wasn’t thinking… I should’ve done better to stop Ko… I was afraid he was going to kill Zark… I know I messed up… I didn’t want to hurt him…” He shook his head, the memories tangled and out of order as he tried to swallow down a rising sob. “We were… I was… only…”

His breath hitched.

“I only intended to power cycle the shield…” he sniffled, rubbing at his arm in a small, unconscious attempt to soothe himself.

It was true. His captor needed a way off the planet, and that couldn’t happen with the shields active. Braze hadn’t wanted to destroy them. He had searched for the least damaging option, something that wouldn’t provoke his captor into doing worse to those he cared about, or even forced him to do so himself. Power cycling would have lowered the shields temporarily; they would have come back online.

He had not been the one who destroyed the tower. He had simply been caught in the aftermath when the stealth team rigged the grid and towers to explode.

“Ko’s never going to forgive me… I wouldn’t blame him either…” he murmured, voice small and broken—like a youngling convinced his best friend hated him, and perhaps had every right to.

Perhaps they were right... perhaps he just wasn't trained well enough to know how to deal with the problems he faced... perhaps Jasper Kai'el had made a mistake in choosing Braze to train... Such negative spiraling thoughts just seemed to overwhelm the half Echani in to a sorry state of a crying and pathetic mess.
Eloise Dinn

 

[Eloise Dinn]

Projects? She wasn't working on any projects. Certainly wasn't spending her hard earned money on anything like that, either. She side-eyed Braze, wondering just how blitzed he had to be to think she was an artisan like him.

As soon as she asked him about Coruscant, the whole story came tumbling out. It wasn't exactly coherent, but she picked up enough of the pieces to begin to fit it all together. "What, were you under mind control or something? Who was making you do it?" Eloise asked, taking another sip of her drink. She wasn't even halfway through the bottle and was already beginning to feel a bit buzzed. Strong stuff. "What did Ko and Zark have to do with any of this?"

Before she knew it, however, Braze was crying. Full on ugly crying, like the world was ending. "Dude..." Eloise frowned, not really sure what to do. She hadn't signed up for this. Still, she was moved to pity and awkwardly patted his back while he sobbed. Maybe I should try to sober him up, she wondered. She could use the Force to filter out the alcohol in his system.

When there was a break in his blubbering, she asked, "Why didn't you say any of this before? You had me thinking you were a traitor, a double agent." And why would he let her or anyone else believe that, when he could just tell them the truth?

Braze​

 

[Braze]

Tags: Eloise Dinn ​

Such tear-soaked confessions were garbled, and difficult to follow. If only it were easier to explain that he had been conditioned to respond to a code phrase… that the moment it was spoken something inside him bent to obedience. The strength of that compulsion had terrified him.

Was being a sleeper agent the same as being mind-controlled?

And did it matter that he had tried to act within the narrow confines of his own choices while under his captor’s influence?

It had all been explained at the trial every tangled detail laid out as plainly as they could manage. Even Jasper Kai'el had tried to express the convoluted truth as clearly as possible... but there had still been a verdict. Not a clean or concise one either, leaving Braze in this odd state of suspension.

"Instead of exile from the New Jedi Order fully and completely, I instead propose self-imposed exile from the Order, until Braze has redeemed himself in the eyes of his mentor and guardian, Master Jasper. I feel that Master Jasper's understanding and connection to the circumstances, as well as his morality and sense of justice, will allow Braze to be held to account fairly. And I also trust Jasper to apply the necessary pressure to see Braze redeemed, before permitting him to seek us out to return to the Order - should Braze even wish to."

It wasn't quite condemnation… but it wasn't absolution either. The Order had simply set him aside… and told him to find his way back.

Could the overwhelmed, crossfaded, sobbing mess in front of Eloise convey or articulate any of that?

No.

Instead he just sobbed out an undignified, childish response with no filter.

"I tried to tell them… but it sounds crazy when you say it out loud! He just—he said some stupid words and something in me just… obeyed!It doesn't change what happened… people still got hurt... I already play the villain half the time…" he slurred. "That's what Shadows are for… chasing secrets… and digging where the rest of the Order doesn't want to look…"

He did, however, grow still and quiet at her gentle touch, sniffling softly as he settled against the stone.

 

[Eloise Dinn]

Braze's crying only got worse, Eloise's discomfort increasing along with it. As she continued to tap his back, she also began the process of filtering the alcohol out of his system with the Force. It seeped out of his pores, leaving a pungent boozy smell in the air. But he should be fully sober within a couple minutes. Provided nothing stopped her from completing the process.

All the while, he continued to provide more details about Coruscant. Something about code words triggering Braze. "Like a sleeper agent? Don't hear about those much anymore," Eloise mused aloud. "Who triggered the code? How did you even get programmed to obey in the first place?"

She couldn't help but snort at Braze claiming that he 'played the villain half the time'. Braze, who had been knighted at the unprecedented age of fifteen and was calling himself Battlemaster before he even hit his twenties, a villain? Yeah right. "Uh, sure buddy. Whatever you say."

She really needed to get this nerf herder sober...

Braze​

 

[Braze]

Tags: Eloise Dinn ​

Eloise proved far more the voice of reason than Braze's present spiral of self-loathing guilt. He gave a small nod as she pieced together fragments from his earlier rambling.

How had he been conditioned to such a degree?

That question pressed against the same sealed door that haunted his sleep. It was the very same reason why he suffered ceaseless nightmares… and those repressed memories were not something he wanted to presently relive. The memories behind it came back briefly in broken flashes as he recalled those fevered dreams, things he had spent years forcing down into the darkened corners of his mind.

He had no wish to drag them back into the light.

Okuma Milogen had his own designs, driven by motives Braze could only guess at, spite, ambition, perhaps something older tied to the tangled history between Okuma and his parents. Braze knew little of it, and truthfully he had no desire to learn.

"I… don't want to think about it, anymore..." he murmured, the words coming out half-choked and sullen tone.

Still, as Eloise worked through the Force to steady him, a reluctant calm began to creep back into his body. The tightness across his shoulders eased. His breathing slowed.

The chaos inside his head began, little by little, to settle.

Was Eloise being… kind…? To him?

The thought felt so strange it bordered on unreal.

Braze let out a quiet breath and turned his head to glance back at her over his shoulder through red-rimmed, glassy eyes. Slowly he eased onto his back again, one hand dragging over his face as he rubbed the lingering sting from his eyes with the heels of his palms.

Another emotion bubbled up to the surfaced as sobriety returned. Shame.

The earlier sorrow still lingered, but this new feeling burned of pure embarrassment at the realization that he had turned into a blubbering mess on the steps in front of her. He pushed himself upright with a soft sniffle, trying to reclaim some scrap of composure. The tears refused to dry as quickly as he wished.

"Thank you…" he managed to squeak in a small, mousey-toned voice, glancing toward her as the meaning of what she had done settled in. She had spared him the humiliation of continuing like that.

He leaned forward, pressing his elbows to his knees while he wiped away the last stubborn traces of tears. His gaze lingered on the bottle resting beside the step before he looked back to her.

"I'm sorry..."

 

[Eloise Dinn]

The surrealness of the situation wasn't lost on Eloise. When she first spotted Braze sitting there and decided to approach him, she certainly hadn't planned on playing nursemaid to a guy who, for all intents and purposes, was one of her enemies. Or at least someone she had a history of really not getting along with.

Her opinion of him hadn't exactly changed all that much in these past few minutes. The things he had said to her and about her in the past still stung. But she at least no longer thought of him as a traitor. He was a bastard, just not a rat bastard.

As he thanked her and apologized, she grunted in acknowledgment. "Don't mention it." In fact, it was probably for the best if they forgot this whole thing ever happened.

Braze's refusal to discuss the matter further was somewhat annoying, but then again it wasn't really any of her business. She only needed to know that he hadn't willfully betrayed the Jedi, the Alliance, and everything they stood for. That he wasn't walking around with zero consequences for his actions. Having satisfied that much, she didn't feel compelled to interrogate him further. "Well, that about answers all my questions," she said, standing up. "Break time's over. I gotta head back. Thanks for the drink, Braze. Oh, and uh... Sorry for accusing you in front of everyone."

Braze​

 

[Braze]

Tags: Eloise Dinn ​

Braze watched her disappear along the path that cut through the tall grass, uncertain if he should say anything further. For a long while after Eloise left, he remained where he sat. The stone steps were warm beneath his palms… worn smooth by centuries of Jedi who had passed through this place long before him.

Elbows resting on his knees, reached out plucking up his last bottle... he turned the empty bottle slowly between his fingers. The sweetness that had seemed so necessary an hour ago now tasted dull on his tongue. His gaze drifted to the scattered bottles and the melted ice creeping across the stone and a grimace graced his pale features.

"Real dignified," he muttered to himself.

Slowly he gathered the glass, packing each bottle back into the bag. When the steps were clean again, he rose and wandered into the courtyard, brushing dust from a carved pillar that had long ago fallen sideways into the grass.

The enclave had stood here for generations before war hollowed it out....It deserved better than neglect he thought to himself. Braze rested his hand against the weathered stone and closed his eyes. With a quiet breath he returned to the steps, pulled the remaining bottles from the pack, and uncapped them one by one. Sweet fizz spilled into the thirsty soil beside the stone.

"Enough of that," he murmured as he emptied the last of them.

"Alright," he whispered "Let's see what we can fix."