The Sinner and the Saint

[Trix Bastin]

[member="Aela Talith"]

Trix drummed the fingers of her right hand against the window frame. She was waiting in one of the dome’s large training rooms, empty save herself, a large mat, and a rack of handheld weapons of mixed variety set against one wall. The repetitive clink of her nails against the frame was soothing, and a vast improvement on the frantic pacing that she had allowed herself in indulge in earlier.

She still wasn’t entirely sure whether the Order were having her on. Jacen Voidstalker, after unceremoniously informing her that she was force-sensitive, had flippantly thrown out an invitation for Trix to stay on Sullust and learn to be a Jedi. A Jedi. A glow stick wielding, peace preaching, weave wearing Jedi.

She’d laughed right in his face as he’d said it. Jedi were about as real as fairy tales in the world she’d come from, as were their shadowy counterparts the Sith. Trix had come across all variations of evil in her life, and not a single one of them had needed the Force to unleash their terror.

But Voidstalker had been stubbornly persistent. He’d also disarmed her without touching her. With a goddamn thought.

She’d never be able to counter a move like that through conventional means. Voidstalker had pushed that point home, sensing her weakness. If she stayed she could learn to fight and defend herself like a Jedi. And she would be beyond the reach of the Black Sun.

Safe.

Trix ceased the drumming of her fingers as she weighed up the word for the thousandth time.

Safe. A concept that she’d given up on a long time ago.

Safe perhaps, but was that even what she wanted?

Trix turned from the window and stalked over to the mat in the centre of the room. She had refused to put on the robes laid out on the end of her bed and had also forgone the new pair of matching boots.

So it was that she stood in a torn black tank top and leggings, her bare toes curling into the soft material at her feet, and waited to meet the woman who would instruct her in the ways of the Force.

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Trix Bastin"]

Aela stepped into the room wearing her usual get up, tightly wrapped robes that one would expect from a woman about to enter a sparring match. Her hair was tied into a tight ponytails and her orange eyes had a firm set to them, her gaze falling onto the only other person in the room. She took note of a few things, small details, the lack of new dress, the matted clothes and the absence of new boots. An eyebrow raised, her gaze settling on the woman herself.

She wasn't quite what Aela had expected, though that was only because Jacen's description had been rather poor.

The young Jedi Marshal had no apprentice to speak of, at least not before she had decided to take on Trix, but she did have plenty of experience both in and out of combat and according to Grand Marshal Rhen was ready to pass on that experience. Aela wasn't entirely sure about that, but she was more than willing to try. From what Jacen had described Trix herself would be somewhat of a challenge, apparently being on the run for some reason. She frowned for half a moment, concern already crossing her features. Not for herself of course, but for the other woman. She herself had recently gone undercover with some of the galaxies criminal elements, and the experience had been hardly pleasant.

"Hello." Aela finally said, stepping through the doorway and offering the woman a greeting.

She had never been good socially, her parents having stated before that Aela had more of a chance of arresting someone than making friends with them. She found however that in recent years she had improved on that, mostly because she was less abrupt, more understanding. The New Jedi Order had helped with that, just like it would help Trix.

 

[Trix Bastin]

[member="Aela Talith"]

The woman that stepped through the door was everything Trix had expected. She was immaculately presented, her hair neatly pulled back, with robes artfully arranged to allow for smooth and unrestrained movement.

Trix didn’t know whether to be relieved or irritated.

The woman slowed a half pace, her eyes tracing the length of Trix from her bare feet up. An indecipherable emotion flickered over her features and vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

Disappointment? Or pity?

Trix felt herself stiffen under the scrutiny despite her intention to remain calm.

The woman continued through the doorway and stopped facing her. There was something indescribably graceful about the way she moved, a fluidity that made the Jedi appear as though she was gliding across the surface of the floor.

Trix watched her settle her weight onto her heels with a trained eye, automatically searching for any sign of potential weakness in her stance.

“Hello,” the Jedi greeted her.

Trix let the silence stand for a long moment, fighting again the powerful urge to turn and walk from the room, from the dome and from Sullust.

“Hi,” she finally managed, the word virtually tainted with her unease. “Did Voidstalker tell you why I’m here?”

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Trix Bastin"]

Aela inclined her head. "Not all of it, just the beginning of the story."

The truth was that she knew little about Trix, her story, why she was here, why she wanted to be a Jedi. They were important details, ones that Aela would have to learn if the young woman was going to be her apprentice. She shifted slightly, moving to the middle of the room and putting on a more friendly smile. She'd been practicing that lately, being more friendly. The other Marshals had given her the criticism that she tended to be on the serious side, unapproachable they called it.

"Why don't you tell me about yourself?" Aela suggested. "You don't have to tell me everything, of course."

Not yet.

They would build trust first, a relationship that would grow into a stronger bond.

Aela wasn't exactly sure how she and Trix would interact, but it was her hope that they would bond as Master and Apprentice to become a powerful force for good. Perhaps that was a bit naive of her, the ask that the two of them become fast friends, but no one had ever accused Aela of sticking too much to reality.

 

[Trix Bastin]

[member="Aela Talith"]

Trix fell silent again. She was unnerved by the woman’s smile, mostly because it confirmed that Jacen had provided little to no specific detail as to how she’d ended up in the dome.

Almost subconsciously, Trix ran the fingers of her left hand over the knuckles of her right. The skin was grazed away, the dried blood of the middle knuckles hardening into fresh scabs.

The silence stretched between the pair of them. The footfalls of a passerby sounded outside the door, the click of boot heels echoing up into high ceiling, followed directly by the musical warble of a creature from the garden outside.

Realising that the other woman would continue to wait her out, Trix bit back a sigh and rediscovered her voice.

“Not much to tell,” she said. “I’ve spent the last year out on the Rim, taking jobs when and where I could find 'em. It was hard work. Shoddy pay. Before that I was in…smuggling. Mostly.”

Trix paused to roll her fingers over her knuckles again. The tattoo on her left wrist, a spiked black circle broken by a jagged triangle at the apex, made her constructed summary virtually pointless. The tattoo was a brand that proclaimed to any and all within eyesight exactly who she was and what she was capable of.

Trix persisted nonetheless. “I eventually jumped a shuttle and ended up on Sullust. Wasn’t planning on sticking around, but Voidstalker offered me breakfast.”

And whiskey, though that wasn’t exactly by choice.

“Breakfast, and somewhere to crash.” she finished.

Trix finally clamped her mouth shut. It wasn’t the truth, it wasn’t even half the truth, but it was still more information than she’d offered anyone unprompted in years.

This place is getting to you Bastin.

The silence started to stretch again before Trix switched tact and asked a question of her own.

“You have a name?”

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Trix Bastin"]

Aela nodded along as the girl told her story. It was quite the tale, really, something that she hadn't actually expected. Aela was never one to judge folk, at least not on their past. She hadn't been raised in a strict fashion, but she had come up with a certain expectation of how people should behave. That expectation often made others uncomfortable around her, but only because they thought she looked down on them. The truth was that Aela respected people far more when they were kind and courteous more than anything else. To her, that was what was important, not their manners or their past.

"My name is Aela Talith." She smiled at the girl, a rare thing for her. "You can call me Aela."

First meetings were always an odd thing.

Always.

More so when it came to the rolls of Master and Apprentice. She had no real clue where this womans strengths lay or what she wanted to do. Jedi were all of a different ilk. She herself was considered a Guardian by Jedi terms, strong with a lightsaber but weaker with the force. From the impression she got of her Aela would hazard a guess that Trix would be much the same. "Tell me about how you fight."

Fighting wasn't all that Jedi did, but it would help the two of them connect at least.

 

[Trix Bastin]

[member="Aela Talith"]

Fight?

The contorted face of the mechanic from the breakfast bar flashed unbidden in her mind. Trix knew from first hand experience that he would struggle to swallow solids for the next few days.

She briefly considered the possibility that Voidstalker had filled Aela in. If that was the case the Jedi, still standing calm as another in front of her, was walking into this encounter with her eyes wide open.

Trix covered her confusion by narrowing her eyes and offering a slight shrug of her shoulders.

“Depends on who I’m fighting,” she said. “And what I need to do to come out the other side breathing.”

Trix ran her fingers over the scabs on her knuckles again. “Not really a lot of honour in the world I’ve come from,” she found herself saying. “Better to be fast, to be dirty, and to put the other guy in the ground before they have the chance to do the same to you.”

The hell am I blabbing on for?

Trix closed her eyes briefly, trying to centre herself. Was this another force trick? Something Aela was using to loosen her tongue?

Or perhaps you’ve spent enough time alone that you now love the sound of your own damn voice.

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Trix Bastin"]

She nodded. "Good."

That might not have been what Trix expected, but Aela was hardly one to fight fair. In the beginning of her training she had been taught that one should, but that had quickly been done away with once her Uncle had taken over. Cameron had made short work of the idea of being honorable in a fight, stating that no one who was worth any salt actually gave a damn about honor. Fighting was about winning, not about seeing who could be the most honorable.

Aela knew that conflicted with the views of many Jedi, but she hardly cared about that.

"Don't suppose you've thought about a lightsaber?" Perhaps she was getting ahead of herself, but Trix was already past the age of most younglings, and if she was going to learn to properly use a lightsaber then it was better to dive right in. "We'll get to the force too."

She smiled at her apprentice. "For me, i'm a reactive fighter."

Aela explained to her would be padawan. "I tend to bounce off of my opponent, countering, rather than attacking. Most of the time it works out, especially against Sith. That means most of my knowledge in the force and lightsaber techniques gear towards more of the flow of battle than anything else."

 

[Trix Bastin]

[member="Aela Talith"]

Trix was in the process of reassessing the woman before her. She’d only crossed paths with a few Jedi since travelling up to the dome, and except Katash, Voidstalker’s new apprentice, they’d all seemed like generic pop up drones from a kid’s fairy tale book. Blathering on about peace, justice, and the power of the Light, as though ideals were enough of a shield against the cruel reality of life in the darkest corners of the galaxy.

It was enough to drive a woman to drink...well it would, if anyone apart from her on the dome preferred a drop. Most likely drinking was passed over as it required someone to shut their trap about salvation for a damn second.

But a good fighter…a fighter was someone that Trix could respect. Even if Aela came wrapped in the doctrine of the Jedi, her response to Trix’s admission about fighting rough suggested her head wasn’t up floating in the clouds like most of her brethren.

Trix blew out a breath, letting some of her anxiety about the meeting drift. Perhaps she didn’t need to jump that shuttle off Sullust. At least not yet.

“Don’t quite understand why you’d drag out a fight when you can send your opponent back to the mud,” Trix said to Aela. “But I get what you’re saying about flow. Well, much as I can...” she paused to wave her hand through the air about her. “Without your Force.”

“Always had a way of reading a man,” she continued. “Can match how he moves, get a sense of what is ticking in his head. Often I know where he’s going to move before he does. It’s kept me breathing longer than most in my line of work.”

Trix dropped her eyes and flexed her right fingers back into a fist. “I know I’m quick with fist and blade. Faster than most I've met,,” she murmured.. “But not sure I can move how I do with a light sword zipping round the place…reckon it might slow me down."

She flicked her gaze back to Aela. "Also reckon I’ve seen enough blademasters get a blaster bolt between the eyes for their trouble.”

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Trix Bastin"]

"Trust me. A lightsaber will do anything but slow you down." Aela had trained with regular swords before she had picked up a lightsaber. Most teacher said that this was foolish, that using a lightsaber was nothing like a sword and that utilizing a regular blade would teach bad forms for later use in a lightsaber. Her father had never quite believed that aspect, believing instead that the use of a regular sword trained one to think ahead of where they needed to go, calculating the weight of the blade, momentum, all those things.

When one learned those factors they moved more carefully, guiding with more grace.

Of course a lightsaber did not have those things. When utilizing a lightsaber there was no weight, no momentum, nothing of that sort of thing. That was what made the weapons so dangerous not only for the opponent, but for the users as well. The plasma blade was dangerous, capable of nearly cutting through anything that it touched. There was a danger in that, one that most normal people underestimated. She smiled slightly, nostalgia coming to her for a moment more.

"Alright." Aela said with a smile. "One more question and I swear I'm done."

The Jedi Master tried to look disarming, her fingers gently lacing around her lightsaber. "Is there anything you wish to learn? I assume you know about the Jedi, maybe even Sith. What we can do, what we're capable of. Is there something you've...something you've always wanted to do? Know?

 

[Trix Bastin]

[member="Aela Talith"]

At the last question Trix felt herself tense. Her fingers rolled back into fists, the tendons in her arms standing out in stark contrast against her pale-scarred skin.

More questions. More probing. Was this an interview or an inquisition?

The deep reservoir of distrust that she’d carried from a young age, carefully crafted by the actions of men and women who had featured prominently in her life, welled abruptly to the surface.

Stupid of you to let your guard down. Stupid of you to blab off ya mouth to someone you just met.

Trix clenched her jaw, battling with her whirling thoughts. If she let them get the upper hand now the anger would follow shortly after. And once that tornado hit…there would be no undoing the damage.

Keep your head Bastin. Remember what they’re offering.

“All I’m good at is fightin’” Trix managed, the sound choked out of her, emerging like a growl. “It’s all I’ve ever been good at.” She paused, trying unsuccessfully to swallow everything building in her chest.

“But when I met Voidstalker in that bar,” she said. “He knocked me on my ass. Twice. In seconds.”

She flicked her gaze to Aela, still standing calm as anything opposite her.

“All I wanna know is how to fight like that, otherwise…otherwise...”

Trix clenched her jaw and quit the rest of the words before they came out. She jerked a hand through her shorn hair with a sharp motion, as though she could slap the concept burning in her brain away.

“Why are you doing this?” She finally asked, exasperated at this conversation. At the unwelcome emotions threading through her veins.

The next question was half accusation. “Why are you really here?”