Private The Coward

[Lorn Reingard]

Tags: Ala Quin | Briana Sal-Soren​

Eyes fluttered open to a dimly lit room, washed in a vibrant blue reflection of a nearby bacta tank. Lorn lay motionless for a second, trying to process the sudden quiet. Was he actually alive? Panic surged before he could stop it. Hands moved frantically, patting down his thighs and shins to make sure his legs still worked. Mercy had absolutely crushed his body in that refinery, but sensation slowly reported back through his nerve endings. He could feel them again, thank Shiraya.

Seeking to center himself, Lorn instinctively called upon the Force to quiet his racing heart. Darkness struck him right back with blinding violence. The rune carved into the side of his face flared like open flame, punishing him instantly for daring to touch the Light. Agony throbbed through his cheek and jaw, forcing a ragged gasp from his lips as the memory of the attack returned.

Coward. That was what Mercy had carved into his flesh. A permanent warning for everyone around him, and a cruel reminder to himself. Taking his best shot at the Sith Empress didn't feel like cowardice, but waiting so long to make the hard choice certainly did. Hesitation had cost him everything once again.

Movement beyond the threshold caught his attention as a familiar presence lingered just outside the medical ward, or at least he thought.

"Acier!" Lorn shouted, his voice hoarse from days of disuse, demanding an explanation from the young wolf.

 

[Briana Sal-Soren]

Thyferra was lost, and most of the Vanguard had been lost with it.

Some had died beneath the trees, while others had become the very things they’d been sent there to try and destroy. Those who survived had come back changed. And then, slowly, they'd begun to leave.

Briana hadn’t stopped them, and had even encouraged it. How could she not?

She understood what brought so many of them here, because much of it brought her here, too. The frustration of watching the Sith advance while the response remained tangled in deliberation. The growing difficulty of accepting patience as wisdom when someone else always seemed to bear the cost of waiting. She'd seen enough of what they left behind to know that the people living beneath that shadow couldn’t afford to measure their suffering against whatever moment the Jedi might finally consider opportune.

Having held authority herself, she understood that there were consequences to acting, and responsibilities that conviction alone couldn’t satisfy. She'd wrestled with those decisions. But she'd grown increasingly unable to accept how readily the consequences of inaction could disappear from the discussion. The Vanguard had offered her somewhere to put that frustration to use. People willing to go where they believed they were needed, with a leader prepared to shoulder the consequences of taking them there. She'd believed there was something worth committing herself to in that. Enough that she’d accepted the strain it placed on other loyalties, on relationships she'd trusted would survive her absence, and now watched in real time as they fell to pieces.

Then they'd learned the truth about Her, and morale and faith plummeted. Following Thyferra, it'd collapsed.

With the Order's amnesty still open, Briana supported the idea that those who'd come back to the camp should take it, that whatever grievances remained between them and the Order could be faced with time, with rest, with something more beneath their feet than the remnants of a failed and wayward movement. There were people who loved them. Teachers and friends who would want them home, even if neither side yet knew what to say when they arrived.

Most had listened, leaving only a few stragglers behind.

Even Acier had gone, for reasons of his own, though he’d first made certain that herself, Kit, and the others would be there to look after Lorn until he woke.

When she'd first seen what had happened to Lorn after Thyferra, she'd marveled in horror. His body had been so badly broken during the battle that Briana still wondered how he’d survived when the shock alone would have killed most others. She’d known just by looking at him that bacta wouldn’t be enough. The broken bones and damaged nerves had required one surgery after another before the doctors could place him, still comatose, into their only bacta tank. With so much damage to contend with, they could offer little certainty about his recovery. And even if those injuries healed, there was still the dark-side brand on his face. He would have to live with the pain of it every time he reached for the Force, for the rest of his life.

They were answers she refused to accept.

They didn't know Lorn like she did. She knew he was a fighter, and knew he would find his way through this, just as he had through all the hardships he’d endured before being brought back to the Jedi Order the first time. He just had to.

Throughout the week she'd kept a close bead on his condition, making routine visitations, receiving reports, and other feed on her datapad via the cams during his stay in the recovery ward.

She'd been on one such a routine when the commotion started, when that familiar voice suddenly tore through the medical ward and stopped her dead in the corridor.

"Acier!" Lorn shouted, his voice hoarse from days of disuse, demanding an explanation from the young wolf.

When the door hissed open to reveal the situation of Lorn crawling out of his tank, Briana hurried across the room and slipped beneath his arm, bracing him against her shoulder as he found his feet. "Woah, hey, take it easy. I've got you." She breathed, keeping an arm around his back as she helped move him over to the medical cot where he could sit.

She gave a soft laugh of relief and took a step back to give him the space to breath, leaving only briefly to fetching him a blanket. She draped it around his shoulders and drew the edges together, rubbing his upper arms through the fabric to help warm him. Her brows drew together as she took a closer look at him. “How are you feeling?” she asked, instead of answering the question he'd initially demanded, while knowing it couldn't be avoided forever. "We should probably get the doctors in here to look at you."

TAG: Lorn Reingard | Ala Quin

​

 

[Ala Quin]

The medical facilities were a significant downgrade compared to that which Ala had awoken after Thyferra. There was a guilt that came with that realisation. A guilt owing to the well resourced, if delayed response to Thyferra, by the Order, when compared to what amounted as underequipped first responders of the Vanguard.

The guilt was only intensified with the way people looked at her. Again, her presence seemed like a harbinger of the end to those that had chosen the Vanguard path. Most of them didn't know her. They didn't know her heart, and her desire to heal. They only saw the woman that would not let them do what they believed was right. They saw a problem, not a person.

And they had lost so much. She saw the loss of friends etched into their auras. And she saw them assigning blame to her.

But all of it became background static when she came to the window looking in upon Lorn's makeshift recovery room. Seeing him again, just a couple of days later, brought up emotions she felt ill equipped to deal with. Even though she had been steadying for this moment, the feel of the Vanguard's base...the flow of the Force around the grief and anger...it had dismantled her readiness of mind.

Speaking with Briana in the moments before rushing to see Lorn, Ala had found herself unequal to the task at hand. Very much feeling the smallest in the room of just a handful of people, there was no further progress made towards salvaging people for the Order.
She understood the stakes. If either Briana or Lorn could be returned to Naboo, the Vanguard would be diminished enough to say that a true schism had been resolved. Should both be brought back legally, the Vanguard would fade from existence. But should neither return? More young, impressionable and angry Jedi would follow the heroes of Thyferra.

Ala had been there too. Ala had almost died too. The unfairness of the moment only registered for a second, and she pushed it aside with all her other hurts that came with the office.

For now she watched, waited and hoped again that she would be enough.

A small voice in her head already answered that question. "I don't know... I am sorry I cannot give you anything more." Lorn's words from months before echoed in her heart.

| Lorn Reingard Briana Sal-Soren |​

 

[Lorn Reingard]

Tags: Briana Sal-Soren | Ala Quin​

Surprise flickered through his exhausted frame as Briana burst through the door. Relief washed over him at the sight of her, though a subtle shift in her posture hinted at an underlying weight he couldn't quite identify yet.

"You're alive," Lorn muttered, his tone flat and matter-of-fact, carrying his own quiet way of expressing genuine gratitude.

Accepting the offered blanket, he wrapped it tightly around his shivering shoulders and pressed his bare feet against the deck plating, testing his center of gravity. His mind refused to linger on his own broken body. Ignoring her questions about his health, he fixed her with a sharp, demanding look.

"Where is Acier?" Lorn asked, his voice hardening.

Ensuring the kid had survived was the only thing that mattered right now. He had leveled a blaster at the throat of Acier's aunt, the Sith Empress herself. It was a cold strike, and now that the frantic adrenaline of the battle had cooled, a desperate need to explain his choice to the boy burned in his chest. Instinctively, Lorn pushed his consciousness outward into the web of the Force, hunting for Acier's distinctive signature.

Darkness struck back instantly. The Sith sigil carved into his face ignited like a branding iron, punishing his reach into the Light with blinding violence. His knees buckled under the sharp agony, sending him crashing onto the hard floor.

"Son of a..." Lorn hissed through gritted teeth, clutching at the side of his face as cold sweat broke across his forehead.

Adapting to this venomous punishment was going to be a nightmare. Yet before the searing pain completely masked his senses, a fleeting glimpse of another signature hit him. Lingering right outside the threshold.

Glancing up from the floor, his swollen eyes searched Briana's face with growing suspicion.

"Why is she here?" Lorn demanded. "How does she even know where we are?"