Private That Friend Who Always Wanders off on a Night Out

[Katja Javik]

Even as they continued to speak, her gaze returned to the ground and she further closed herself off by placing her hands in her pockets in an undeniable evidence of shame.

The Jedi were simultaneously the best and worst people for her to have taken refuge with. She was ignorant to the intricacies of the Force but she knew how finely tuned Jedi could be to emotions. There was little she could hide as was evident when her fears were deducted and revealed, but they were the only place she could find relative safety at present.

His mention of the senate struck a certain degree of fear into her. She never wanted to face the senate. She could only imagine what their verdict would be with all their knowledge of her past. “I know they’ll side against me.” She replied, disheartened. Other Stormtroopers may have been able to get away with their actions more lightly but she had committed far worse acts in the name of war than the average Stormtrooper.

His accusation was strong and it was not a question she had ever faced before. Always on the receiving and of orders, never questioning until the end, there was always someone else to blame for her actions but ultimately as the person who carried them out the responsibility fell on her, even though she didn’t want to hear it.

After a few short moments of silence, she nodded, but immediately tried to deny responsibility.

“I was just following orders.”

Rakaan Horne

 

[Rakaan Horne]

CORUSCANT - Katja Javik

​

The Jedi allowed for a series of short, brief, and all round subtle nods. His lips pursed as one, a thin line that became his mouth while there was no hint of denial to be found in the ever-blue hues of his eyes. Rakaan both understood and knew, accepted in full, that the senate had not been mistaken in their mistrust of the Imperials and neither were all Imperials slated and deemed as treacherous traitors to freedom and liberty to all. He wondered, for all of a snapshot of a second, if this Imperial would be here now if some foul fate had not befallen her. If the shackles of tyranny had not been loosened by another's misdeeds against her, had not afforded her a glimpse of clarity, if the squeeze of a blaster's trigger would still come so easily as the shame she felt so painfully within her now, a rotting knot in her stomach that crept all the way up to toy with her mind?

Perhaps so, the touch of cynicism graced his cheek. No, never, of course not, believed the truest form of Jedi in him; the one with a heart made from a sun's burst, bleeding while aflame, sputtering and crackling with the flash of an exploding star.

Everyone was worth saving.

But maybe not everyone could be saved.

"Then prove them wrong," said Rakaan simplistically, weightless and free from the burdens of her circumstances. "Help the Jedi, the Alliance. Tighter restrictions, maybe," he said almost laughingly, "but it's a step to prove to the senate that you're not one of them anymore, and whatever you did isn't you."

​

 

[Katja Javik]

She casted her gaze away, ashamed to face the reality of the situation she had created for herself. After years of hiding behind the culpability of officers, there was nothing to defend herself from her own judgement or the judgement of the senate.

Though she was by no means as good-hearted as the Jedi, she could still recognise the amorality in the Imperials. Shooting surrendering adversaries was not an honourable practice and the thought of those she had unjustly killed in battle still haunted her.

Life beyond the Empire was never something she had considered until she was forced out. She had always cynically assumed and accepted that she would be killed long before then but instead she was trapped in an aimless purgatory.

She looked back at him when he addressed her but her gaze didn't suggest any sign of hope. "But if the Imperials became a threat again..." She trailed off as she pondered on the possibility of helping the Alliance. "You couldn't ask me to raise a weapon on my own people. Maybe I don't agree with everything I've done but there are some good people in there. Probably not what you consider to be good but... good enough." She had spent enough time saving lives in the field to recognise who was worth saving.

She sighed and briefly looked past him as she decided whether to continue. "I chose the Empire, you know?" She looked back towards him. "I wasn't one of those raised under Imperial rule, indoctrinated from birth. My home world was under Jedi occupation but they didn't do anything good for me." She explained her unsavoury view of Jedi which evidently stuck with her. "I made a choice." She admitted in a moment of honesty. "With that kind of credibility. No one would ever trust me."

Rakaan Horne