May the Fourth Be With The All Skate

[jedi_interrupted]

The bar shifts, or it changed when no one was looking, and now resembles a certain cantina popular with the villainy and scum, as well as more upstanding folks. The air is dryer than usual, and a taste of grit and sand just hangs in the air. It just makes you want some blue milk doesn't it?

Has your character changed? Perhaps...who can tell? The Landlord I suppose but they aren't talking.

[ooc: HI and Welcome to a Star Wars themed All Skate, the best way to celebrate May the Fourth! Party style post. You do not have to interact with any of my characters to play.
The Rules are simple:
- This post, and any post with the subject heading ALL SKATE are open to everyone.
That means old characters, new characters, retired characters, doubles of characters, original characters, non-canon compliant characters.
- We will all play nice and adhere to Wheaton's Law: Don't be a dick.
- Gratuitous behavior, either of a violent or sexual nature, will not be tolerated in the Comm. Take that to an OOM, and then Content Warning the hell out of it before you link it.
- Communication is paramount. Everyone's keyed up, let's just have some fun.]

Comments

[imagines_the_ocean]

Her voice is wry. "Better? Yes. But not more than a little, I think. Honestly I haven't even been taught anything yet. I need to go find him."

She shakes her head.

"The only things I've done, really, were unconsciously or just guessing after seeing what... someone else did." She shivers. He was in her mind. She learned so much from it. "But when I told Leia, she said--"

Of course you can't expect yourself to know everything. Don't feel bad about that, Leia says in her memory. But you've taken the first steps.

She remembers now. Her eyes are wide.

These are your first steps.

She's heard Obi-wan's voice before.

[acertainpov]

Okay, she's looking at him weird. And that's not the only wierd thing... she hasn't been taught? But she's so old...

"What is it?"

She recognises him, that's clear. But from where?

[imagines_the_ocean]

She understands more deeply with every piece of information.

"You knew him," she repeats. "Really knew him, really well. Not just a little, or from stories."

He has to. Surely his voice wouldn't speak through the saber otherwise.

"Lu-- uh. Anakin." She doesn't know what to do. "Anakin Skywalker?"

[acertainpov]

"He was my Padawan."

That still doesn't necessarily fill in the blank here. So he furrows his brow just a bit, looking for the balance between giving her all the information she needs, and figuring out what he needs to ask.

Still. 'Was' because Anakin is a Jedi Knight now, no matter what Obi-Wan calls him all the time.

"I was there when he made that," he adds, with a nod to the saber.

[imagines_the_ocean]

She is torn between joy and trepidation. She wonders if the betrayal felt worse from a son or a nephew than a student.

She doesn't know if this man survived to see it.

"Is that what Jedi students were called?" No one has said the word to her.

She takes a deep breath. She offers him her hand. "I'm Rey."

[acertainpov]

He's not surprised he doens't know it, but - wow, that past tense does not belong.

"Obi-Wan," he responding, taking her hand warmly. "Very nice to meet you, Rey. And if you've got any questions - because it seems that you do...?"

[imagines_the_ocean]

Her hand has staff callouses. They also have a particular roughness from life in a desert.

"I don't know where to start," she admits. "I've barely had any chance to ask anyone anything. I thought everything about it was a myth."

She thinks she can explain her ignorance. "Have you ever heard of Jakku?"

[acertainpov]

Obi-Wan frowns again in thought, trying to figure out if it sounds familiar.

Eventually: "No, I don't think I have. Is it a Rim planet?"

[imagines_the_ocean]

"Western Reaches of the Inner Rim. There's barely anything besides desert and dead ships--and those weren't there in your time."

Her smile is wan. "No one was ever going to come for me."

The Force says far more than her words. The tangible pulse of grief, loneliness, and abandonment cuts deep.

Rey shakes herself again. Her emotions dim.

"I don't even really know what the Force is. Han..." Her voice breaks. Her grief flares more strongly with helpless anger.

Not once does the Light at her core waver.

"Han said it was a power that binds together good and evil," she says unsteadily, "the dark side and the light. That's all I was told. I think." Rey glances at the lightsaber. She frowns.

[acertainpov]

Obi-Wan puts out a hand, and softly covers her own. There's another sort of touch there as well: gentle, calming. But meeting her as an equal, no attempt to push anything on her.

"It's more than just 'good' and 'evil,'" he says. "The force flows from every living thing and it binds everything together. It has a dark side, but a Jedi is trained not to give in to that."

Everything about him feels controlled. Strong, and completely within his own mind.

[imagines_the_ocean]

Only Leia has ever been so calming and soothing. Rey hadn't known that part of her existed to soothe.

(She has a vague memory. It hurts to remember.)

"I think I heard something like that." She gestures at the lightsaber. "I saw so much, I'm not sure. I don't know who it was."

She thinks the voice spoke oddly. It's hard to remember.

Jedi training still feels like a fairy tale. "What is it that Jedi are trained to resist? I think I've felt it," she adds. "But I'm not sure I understand."

[acertainpov]

"Losing control, mostly."

She's been radiating so much pain, so much experience she's had to deal with very recently. The names - other than Anakin of course - mean nothing to him, but there's grief so strongly. He'll take a bet there's been negative associations with the Force there. That she knows what the Dark Side feels like at least.

"Negative emotions - anger, fear, suffering. Those are what leads to the Dark Side."

[imagines_the_ocean]

Rey watches him quietly. She digests what he's said.

She looks back down at the lightsaber. "Does the Force... often show you things?" She is still trying to piece together what she saw. "The past, or-- or the future?"

[acertainpov]

"For some people, it can," he agrees. "My old Master, Yoda, he has a strong connection to the future. I'm usually just content to hope I won't die in the next few seconds."

[imagines_the_ocean]

She laughs. That sounds like the last few days of her life. "Do all Jedi live like that?"

She quiets again and thinks. Then she sighs. "Has it ever done anyone any good to see the future?"

[acertainpov]

Laughter is good. It's a good way to release some of that conflict he can feel in her.

"It is for Jedi in my day. We're right in the middle of a war. But under normal circumstances - no, the life of a peacekeeper isn't always one of constant peril."

For the second, he shakes his head. "My Master says - the future is always emotion, and emotions can be deceiving."

[imagines_the_ocean]

She had known he must be close to that war. To hear it confirmed is painful.

He doesn't know.

"So are we," Rey confesses. "It'd be nice to have peace one day. At least I'd get more sleep." She can joke, too.

She looks down at her hands. "I tried to run from mine. From this." The Force. "I didn't want it, so I ran. I didn't get far, and people died because of it."

People she loves. She knows Kylo Ren made the choice to kill them. He might not have had the chance if she'd chosen differently.

[acertainpov]

Again, that touch through the force. That reassurance. That gentle tone in his voice stripped of all facetiousness.

"Rey, people die in War, and it's the fate of the Jedi to take responsibility for that. But you can't let yourself be destroyed by the guilt."

[imagines_the_ocean]

She gives him a sidelong look. "Of course people die in war. Have you ever lived in a desert? People die all the time."

She shakes her head.

"This is different. I know what they chose, and what he chose." Kylo Ren. She has to stop him.

"I know it's not my fault." She is lying. She tries to believe it. "But if I hadn't been so afraid that I ran, none of those choices would have needed to happen."

She frowns though. Maybe she's wrong...?

[acertainpov]

He means that look, with dead-on equal dryness. He knows that, Rey.

He also knows that no matter how hard people have had it before, nothing prepares a young Jedi for their first losses. For the burden of the numbers they have to count.

"Sounds like you made a mistake," he says calmly. "Maybe if someone had been able to find you earlier they could have trained you how to face that fear. But running from it's only natural."

[imagines_the_ocean]

She is very self-aware for someone so young.

She is still young. Sometimes it shows.

She shrugs nomcommitally. "It might not have made a difference," she admits. "But they were the first ones to care.

"But if it didn't matter, has it ever done anyone good, to know what's coming?"

[acertainpov]

"If you can prepare for it, maybe," he says. ""If you can prevent it, almost certainly. But who's to say we can change it for the better? We can only do what we think is right at the time."

[imagines_the_ocean]

Rey lets out a soft breath. She just barely remembers someone telling her that before.

"I'm pretty sure that's where I went wrong. Although..."

She looks off to one side. Her lips curl into a little smile.

"Maybe in some ways it was for the better."

[acertainpov]

"One thing is for sure," he adds lightly. "We can't get anything out of trying to see what might have been."

He smiles lop-sided, his beard twitching as he does.

"What are you going to do now?"

[imagines_the_ocean]

"Try to find the man who can teach me," she says simply.

She frowns.

"Do all Dark Side users offer to teach you or ask you to join them right after hurting the people you love?"

Rey sounds exasperated.