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They've got less than a week left on Tython before they're due to head back to Carrick Station. Rusk has been camping out in the Gnarls and fending off manka cats with sharpened sticks, which is his idea of a fun relaxing vacation. Doc has been interrogating the Temple healers about the latest research on conventional medicine versus Force healing, and failing to flirt with the cute Nautolan in charge of patient records. T7-01 is visiting old friends, both organic and not; he's amassed a pretty impressive list. Scourge ... well, he's holed up in the Defender's cargo bay, as usual, though whether he's graciously sparing the Temple his presence or grouchily avoiding the planet full of Jedi outside is anyone's guess.
Nova's mostly been taking long hikes up into the mountains. Kira hopes they're helping it ... decompress, clear its head, whatever. At least it seems a little less on-edge when they do bump into each other. Usually in the salle, where Kira's been spending most of her time, brushing up on her saber technique against visiting Knights and Masters, and occasionally helping the older padawans with their Niman. Or their advanced Shii-Cho, if Nova's around for a demonstration match.
Kira's on her own today, though, and as she flows through the motions of a Form VI kata, the afternoon sunlight streaming in through the tall windows, she senses a cool, calm presence in the Force flaring and then subsiding, as if to politely grab her attention. She breaks off the sequence and turns to the newcomer.
Another human woman stands in the doorway, a lightsaber held loosely in one hand. Greying hair, deeply tanned skin, blue eyes, willowy build; her face has the ageless look that some Jedi Masters get after years spent immersed in the Force, what Kira likes to think of as the inverse of dark side corruption.
The Jedi smiles and gives a polite bow. "May I join you?" she says.
Kira gestures grandly. "Of course, Master ...?"
"Brellis Tavira," she says, stepping onto the mats. "And you are Jedi Knight Kira Carsen, I take it."
"Is this a 'your reputation precedes you' situation, or a 'your reputation precedes you' situation?"
Brellis laughs. "The former. In this case, your reputation as a duelist."
"Thank the Force," says Kira. She coughs. "Uh, I mean ... thank you, Master Brellis."
They get down to business in short order. Brellis favors Niman, same as Kira, but there are some pretty significant stylistic differences. It's why Kira was drawn to the form in the first place: it's highly modular, focused more on providing a flexible melee scaffolding for using the Force in combat than on rigid moves and counter-moves.
Kira's Niman has been described as anywhere from unpredictable to the not-even-a-little-bit-condescending scrappy. Lots of blade switching, lots of telekinetic attacks coming from unexpected directions. She'd call Brellis Tavira's ... fluid. The Jedi Master isn't the fastest combatant Kira has ever fought—that honor goes to the Ataru junkies—but both she and her blade are always exactly where they need to be, exactly when they need to be there. Kira feels a bit like she's fighting her own reflection, or her own shadow.
Brellis calls a halt after nearly an hour of more or less nonstop sparring, as the sun slips behind the mountains outside. Kira's out of breath, sticky with sweat, and rumpled; the only sign that Brellis has needed to exert herself whatsoever is a few hairs out of place.
"So—do I live up to my rep?" Kira says, phrasing it like a joke, but genuinely curious.
Brellis deactivates her blue saber and smiles again, but there's something ... odd, about the expression. Like a shadow on an overcast day, diffuse and vague. "You do indeed. I'm quite impressed." She pauses, then says, carefully, "I ... couldn't help but notice that you incorporate a surprising amount of Shii-Cho into your technique."
Kira snorts, and lets her green saberstaff hiss off. "Blame it on Knight Fennovan," she says. "I used to think Form I was useless for anything but teaching newbies how to hold a lightsaber. Then I spent a few years working with Shii-Cho's number one evangelist. I'm a believer, now."
"Hmm," says Brellis, which is never a good sound for a Jedi Master to make. She turns her own saber over and over in her hands, staring at the hilt. "Is Knight Fennovan ... well?" she says, tone unreadable.
Kira tries not to bristle. People keep asking her that, and she keeps brushing them off, but it would be a lot easier to give them the brush-off if she actually believed it was anywhere in the vicinity of well, which ... it isn't. But saying that is just inviting trouble, so ...
"It's enjoying the break, that's for sure," she says breezily. "Still, I think we're all looking forward to heading back out there. The war's not over yet."
"I apologize," says Brellis, bowing her head. "I ask not because of their—its recent achievements, but because it has been some time since we last spoke."
Kira blinks. "You know Nov—Knight Fennovan?"
"I did, once. I was its first master."
She blinks again. "It ... never, uh, mentioned you. At least not by name." No, actually, thinking back, it hasn't mentioned her at all—it's alluded to bouncing around from teacher to teacher before catching Orgus Din's attention right before the galaxy started exploding, but never anyone specific.
In hindsight, that's a little weird. Both the lack of a consistent mentor, and the lack of identifying information about the ones it did have.
Brellis nods, seemingly to herself. "I see." She sighs. "Fennovan was not always so ... guarded."
"Hmm," says Kira, trying very hard to squelch the seething curiosity, or at least hide it in the Force.
Unfortunately, Brellis notices anyway. Fortunately, she doesn't chide Kira to mind her own damn business. She just shakes her head a little and says, "Thank you for sparring with me, Kira Carsen, but I'm afraid I must take my leave. May the Force be with you."
"May the Force be with you," Kira echoes. She watches as Brellis Tavira walks out of the salle, frowning.
"Hey, Boss," Kira says, once she's cleaned up and back on the Defender.
Nova is finishing off a bowl of Doc's leftover soup. It doesn't look up as she swings into the galley to grab her own dinner, carved bone eye-mask pointed at the cramped table in front of it, but the Force goes warmer around it, and it smiles a little. "Kira. Good day?"
"Good enough," she says. She rolls her shoulders and grimaces as she reaches up into a cabinet for the bread. "Gonna be feeling it tomorrow, though."
"Not to be deeply hypocritical, but why so much saber practice?" Nova asks lightly.
Kira blows out a breath. "I don't know," she mutters. "I guess ... There were a few too many close calls, on Corellia and Dromund Kaas. Trying to avoid any more of those."
"Ah." Nova scrapes its spoon along the bottom of the bowl. "I ... understand. But—maybe spend at least a few days doing something other than prepare for war?"
"Maybe," Kira says noncommittally. She grabs condiments and toppings out of the cold storage unit, and starts slapping them onto the bread slices. "Anyway, I had a weird match today."
"Weird, how?"
"This Jedi Master came in and asked for a spar. Then she asked about you. Not—not the way Grandmaster Shan's been asking, or anything. She said she was your first master."
The Force goes horribly blank and silent. Nova is too still. "What did she want to know?" it says, voice rasping in its throat.
Kira eyes it, suddenly on edge. "How you were doing," she says slowly.
Nova doesn't speak for a long, long moment. Then it says, "What did you tell her?"
"Nothing. The usual banthashit—look, are you okay?" Kira pulls a face. "Stupid question. Rephrase: what the hell?"
Another painfully long pause. "Brellis Tavira selected me as her padawan when I was thirteen," Nova says eventually. "We parted ways under less than ideal circumstances three years later."
Which still leaves another two or three years before they met during the Bengel Morr fiasco. Kira dithers, then heaves a sigh and smashes the two halves of her sandwich together. She marches over to the table with the plate and sits down across from Nova. "Want to talk about whatever happened?" she says.
It raises the bowl to drink the last of the broth, or maybe just to obscure its face. Slowly, it lowers it, lips pressed together. The Force roils, then settles, like it's gathering a heavy armorweave cloak around itself. "This isn't—" It stops. Tries again, quieter. "Please, just ... hear me out."
Kira takes a bite of sandwich. "I'm listening," she says.
It goes silent for nearly three minutes, jaw working like it keeps almost speaking and then thinking better of it. Kira eats her sandwich, then just sits there, waiting. Watching.
She's seen Nova struggle for words, plenty of times. She's seen it flabbergasted, horrified, furious, scared. She's never seen it like this.
Another thirty seconds of silence, and then:
"Brellis Tavira left me and another padawan to die on a mission," Nova says, too even, too controlled. "I survived. He didn't. She recused herself from teaching me, after. We haven't spoken since."
Kira stares at it. "What? Why?"
"She said that she was becoming too attached to me." It takes an unsteady breath. "So she let go."
"... Seriously? She let go? That's what she's calling it?" Kira says, incredulous.
Nova's face is pointed at the table, shoulders tense. It doesn't respond.
"And the other master was okay with all of this?"
Nova shakes its head. "He ... disapproved of how close we were. He had seniority. I don't ... I don't know for certain, but I think he was the one who pushed for her to leave us."
Kira blows out a breath. This just keeps getting better and better. "I know this isn't easy to talk about, but ... what the hell happened?"
"... Brellis and I were sent to Driamorrek, a planet on the verge of a civil war. We were supposed to provide support for the Jedi already on-world—Master Garen Odha, and his apprentice, Kaz Pelerion. Odha was ... very dedicated." Nova pauses, then says, softly, "And Kaz was my first real friend."
Kira grimaces. Three guesses where this is going.
"The four of us tried to resolve the situation, but we failed. Negotiations with the corporatists fell through. They besieged the capital. We managed to push them back, eventually, but during their retreat they set off these seismic mines, and Kaz and I were caught in the shock zone. We ... fell. Into a fissure. It collapsed on top of us. We were both hurt, badly." It half-raises a hand to its face, as if to touch the deep diagonal scar running from forehead to chin, cutting down through its lips. It visibly forces itself to put the hand down, curling it into a fist on the tabletop.
"Kaz just—gave up. He knew that nobody was coming to save us. I didn't believe him. I kept trying to reach Brellis through the Force, tried to rig my comm to boost the signal to call for help, but by then we were nearly out of air. I'd learned a breath-control trance, and I tried to teach it to Kaz in the time we had left, but ..." Nova swallows. "I don't—I remember him holding my hand. Then I lost consciousness.
"I woke up at a medcenter a few days later. Kaz was dead when the search and rescue team found us. Brellis and Odha were long gone."
Kira slumps back and rakes a hand through her hair. "And ... after?" she says.
Nova runs a thumbnail over the edge of the soup bowl. "I called her. I asked what happened, why she left. She said that she had allowed her feelings about me to compromise her judgement, and that it was the most difficult decision she'd ever had to make. The battle was over, she knew I was alive, and she didn't even try to help us, in order to prove to Garen Odha that she could let go of her attachment to me."
With that, it stands up jerkily and strides over to the sink with its bowl, nervous energy skittering over it like static. It returns to the main galley area but doesn't sit down, pressing its back to the bulkhead and folding its arms tight across its chest.
"... So she was afraid," Kira says, lip curling in disgust. "Some Jedi."
Nova stills again. "What—what are you getting at, exactly?"
"Brellis was so afraid of her own fear that she left you to die. That's not the Jedi way, that's—that's being a selfish asshole."
Nova is digging its fingers into the fabric of its robes. "Every Jedi who's ever talked to me about it has said she did the right thing," it says quietly.
"Well, they're assholes too, and they clearly haven't read the rulebook as well as they think they have," Kira says, furious on its behalf. "Being a Jedi is about protecting people, even when it's hard. Caring about people, even when it hurts. Not abandoning them because you're scared of your own feelings. I thought we were supposed to let go of our fear, not run away from it."
Nova takes a shallow breath. "An argument could be made that that's ... exactly what she did. Letting go of fear. Facing it head-on. Proving it had no power over her, by ensuring she would lose what she feared losing."
"Is that what they told you? Banthashit. There is no emotion, there is peace doesn't mean you throw away something good on the off chance you might lose it. It means you don't let your fear stop you from doing the right thing. Those people don't deserve to be called Jedi."
"... You and I have very different ideas about what it means to be a Jedi."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Brellis Tavira is a good Jedi. Garen Odha is a good Jedi. Satele Shan is a good Jedi. We're ... not."
Kira scoffs, and gets up to take her own sandwich plate over to the sink, too. "What, 'cause we care about each other? That only counts as attachment if we're stupid about it."
"Attachment isn't—" Nova breaks off as she passes it, not turning to follow her. "You can't just ... handwave the people like Brellis and Odha. You can't act like they're just meaningless outliers, like the way they are has nothing to do with the Code, like the problem is that they're doing it wrong. There's too many of them who are like that. Too many in positions of power. Too many on the Council."
Kira returns to perch on the edge of the table. "Okay, but they don't get to decide what being a Jedi means just because they're the oldest and the stodgiest. Don't I get to define that for myself?"
"You ... can, but you have no power within the Order. You're not the one deciding who gets censured or promoted, or how the Code is interpreted when it comes to policy or strategy. So on a practical level—no, not really."
"But consider: I'm right, and they're wrong," Kira says, a little flippantly, but if it came down to it ... yeah, she'd stand by that.
Nova looks frustrated, brows pinching under the carved bone eye-mask. "How many of them can be wrong in the same way before it says that there's something deeper going on?"
"Deeper how?"
It opens its mouth. Closes it. Bows its head. "You—you have this, this idea of the Jedi, in your head, and it's—it's great. It's wonderful. It's everything the Jedi should be. And you have good reasons to see the Jedi that way. But sometimes it's like you stop seeing anything that contradicts that ideal. Or you ignore it, or you brush it off, or—Kira, the most Jedi thing about you is that you hate the Sith. You're passionate and impulsive and volatile and irreverent and you break the rules whenever you feel like it, and that's ... admirable, in a lot of ways, but it's also atypical."
Kira raises an eyebrow. "Sometimes the rules are stupid. So yeah, I ignore them. Doesn't mean I'm not a Jedi."
"That's just it—to you, being a Jedi has nothing to do with the rules because nobody's ever really ... punished you. For breaking them. Nobody's told you that if you can't follow them perfectly you're a failure as a Jedi, you're on the fast track to the dark side, you're a bad person, you're not good enough."
"Sure they have," Kira says with a shrug. "Usually not that, uh, aggressively, but it happens all the time. I just don't take it personally, y'know?"
The blood drains out of Nova's face. "Maybe you should!" it snaps. "Maybe you don't understand what you signed up for because you were too caught up in your fantasy version of the Jedi Order to notice that the reality is fucking broken! It's not just a few individual bad Jedi who told me that Brellis did the right thing, it's the whole fucking Order! It's the Code, it's the Council, it's everything! You think it's just about fighting the Sith and helping people and I wish that were true but it's not—"
"Then why are you still a Jedi, if you hate the Order so much?" Kira demands.
"My family gave me to the Jedi when I was three," Nova says. "By the time I was old enough to leave, they were throwing me into one crisis after another and telling me that I was their only hope. Would you rather I bailed in the middle of Var Suthra's little superweapon crisis? How about on Tatooine—should I have just tossed my lightsaber out the window and left you and Teeseven to rescue Kiwiiks alone? Should I have done it when Angral melted Uphrades and attacked Tython? How about after we escaped Vitiate—should I have walked away while he tried to set off half a dozen apocalypses at once and Grandmaster Shan apparently couldn't spare a single other Jedi to help us?"
"How about now?" says Kira. "What's keeping you here? Why not just leave?"
"Oh, great idea—walk out right after I'm publicly accused of falling. If I leave now, I spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder—I'm too powerful for them to just let me go unsupervised," it says, with a laugh that's all bitterness and irony. "Or maybe that's just the dark side talking."
Kira takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, releasing her fear and frustration into the Force. "Nova ... they're not all like Brellis Tavira. There are good Jedi out there. People who aren't trying to trick you, or—or trap you, or punish you for not living up to their standards. People who want to help."
"Where? Where are they? Why are you the only one who's ever said anything? What kind of help can they even offer?"
"What would help you?" Kira says.
Nova's lips part for a moment. Then it presses them together and turns its face off to the side, as if avoiding her gaze. "Just—tell me I'm not crazy. Tell me I'm not overreacting or making things up or being uncharitable. Tell me you understand that you're the one doing it wrong, by Jedi standards, and that's an actual problem."
"I mean ... you are a little crazy," Kira says teasingly.
"... Fuck you," Nova breathes.
Kira laughs, but Nova holds up a hand, and the Force goes tense and cold. "No. Fuck you."
She frowns. "Nova, that was a joke—"
"No," it says again. "No, don't—don't joke about that, don't—" It breaks off, then says, too evenly, "Kaz Pelerion was a good Jedi, and good Jedi killed him. He died crying because he knew nobody would come for him. I told him it would be okay, Brellis would come for us even if Odha wouldn't, and she never did. I tried to tell someone, get anyone to do something or even just listen, and they never did. Everyone I talked to either brushed me off or told me to stop being so upset that my friend suffocated to death to prove another Jedi's virtue. Brellis Tavira and Garen Odha are still Masters in good standing with the Council. This is bigger than two bad actors, Kira!"
"So let's take it to the Council," she says. "They forgave me for not coming clean about my past right away—they're not completely unreasonable."
"I did," Nova hisses. "I tried. Guess how that turned out? And you didn't need forgiveness—you did nothing wrong! You didn't owe them your personal history when you joined, the only reason it became relevant was Vitiate's connection to you, which you didn't understand the scope of at the time, you told them once it became relevant,and then they acted like you had to make up for something you had zero control over!"
"Yeah, well, they still let me stay in the Order, and I hear that sometimes you just have to be the bigger person and say you're sorry first—"
"You shouldn't need to! Do you even hear yourself? They keep doing this, blaming other people for being hurt by things they did or allowed to happen, insisting that it's never their fault and it's never their responsibility and they never need to lift a damned finger to help—and you keep acting like it's at worst a minor annoyance, not a sign that they don't deserve you!"
"What do you want from me?" she demands. "Honest question! Should I drop everything and leave the Order? Storm the Council chambers and scream at them until they put Odha and Brellis on disciplinary leave? You act like it's all or nothing, like the Jedi are either flawless saints or worse than the Sith—"
"Where the hell are you getting 'worse than the Sith' out of—"
"—and I don't know what you expect me to do about it! I'm trying to be the kind of Jedi who'd make an Order where what happened to you could never happen again, but I can't do that if I just write the whole thing off as a lost cause—"
"Oh, I'm sure the Council will hand you a seat and start taking your suggestions to heart any day now," Nova says scathingly. "You know, because you're such an exemplary Jedi who's earned so much goodwill and trust and isn't the close associate of a disgraced fuckup and definitely isn't a Child of the thrice-damned Sith Emperor."
Kira glares. "Do you want me to believe that you're still totally in control and the dark side isn't eating your brain? Because you're making it kind of difficult, right now."
Nova looks as if it's about to snap at her again, only to catch itself at the last moment. It shuts its mouth with a sharp click of teeth and takes a few deep breaths. "I am not trying to attack you or call you a bad person for still being ... invested, in the Jedi," it says carefully, which is a hell of a thing to say after that last little monologue. "I just—I need you to understand why I'm not."
"... Okay," says Kira, forcing herself to simmer down. "Okay. You're hurt—they hurt you, a lot, and it was wrong, and they got away with it, and that's worse. I'd be pretty disillusioned, too. But joining the Jedi ... it was the best thing I ever did.I'm not giving up on that. Or on you. Okay?"
Its expression flickers oddly, then shutters again. Mostly, it just looks tired. It clasps its hands behind its back, and points its face at the floor. "Okay," it echoes.
"... Are we good?"
Nova's face is too blank, and the Force is as calm as a fresh minefield around it. "No," it says, after an uncomfortable pause. "But thank you for listening. Please excuse m—"
"No, hang on, something's still—"
"This is no longer a productive conversation," Nova says woodenly. "Please excuse me."
Kira steps between it and the door, scowling. "Nuh-uh. You're talking in canned lines, you only do that when you're really upset—"
"Get out of my way," it says, and its tone drops to something cold and dangerous, something she hasn't heard since Nova wasn't Nova—the way it spoke on the Fortress, while it was under Vitiate's control.
Kira falters. "Boss ... ?"
It strides forward, sudden and sharp, apparently ignoring the fact that she's standing directly in front of the exit—and Kira flinches back on pure instinct, to avoid a collision or to avoid the reminder of the thing that wore her best friend's face.
It's out the door before she can say another word.