About Time

[Val Ticon]

Rushing through the halls of the Green Jedi Temple, the youth Val Ticon let the excitement fill his being as news of Ador Horn’s return had reached him. Being another of Morteg’s apprentices that also possessed a strong heritage to the Green Jedi as a whole gave the boy someone he felt he could identify with. Someone he actually felt he could confide in.

Black hair cut short his facial features on display for all to see it was hard to deny his heritage to either Julius or to his mother from what few pictures he’d seen of her. The looks he’d inherited a near perfect combination of the two the boy also having taken after them in more ways than just that.

Entering the dock at a full sprint Val or as others knew him, Desric skidded to a halt as across the dock a vessel say its ramp down and at the foot stood Ador. Yet next to the other Jedi was an individual Val had never seen before. Skidding to a halt the boy squinted wondering why Ador was riding with the stranger.

“Desric! Padawan Desric, you should be in your classes!” Came the mechanical, tinny voice of one of the temples training droids. It hopped into the room on its left leg while its right arm was also missing, the glowing red chunks and darkened marks near what remained of the appendages giving away what had happened to the droid. Yet it still pursued after the young Corellian.

Sneering at hearing his official name called the boy spun on his heels. All around him people failed to see him as anything but a Sedaire. They didn’t see Val as an individual. At least not in his mind. “I told you my name is Val!” The pre-teen yelled his right arm raising the air between and the droid rippling.

The force responded to the surge of emotions and before the droid could react it was lifted off its feet and sent hurtling across the confines of the space dock to slam onto a workbench. Teeth clenched Val’s eyes narrowed on the droid before turning back to focus on Ador and the new guest to the temple.

[member="Keira Priest"]

 

[Keira Priest]

It felt strangely forbidden, returning to Corellia after so long, and setting foot on the Green Jedi Temple grounds no less. At one point in her life she’d lived here, making house with her then-husband and their son, raising him together in the ways of the Green Jedi and the Mandalorians both. That had only lasted as long as he’d seen it fit to, and after their less-than-civil divorce he’d taken her son and that was seemingly the end of it. But now she was back with a very different Green Jedi in tow, having taken it upon herself to transport him back home after what had almost been a deadly engagement for one of them.

Keira was just seeing him off when a much younger child ran up, and she would have paid him no mind had not been for the droid calling his name as it hobbled after him. That was enough to cause her to freeze in her tracks, heart in her throat as she struggled to process the fact that her son was here, and he was safe, but most important was that he was here. It took everything she had not to drop to her knees and cry, but she managed, though only barely.

Shaking hands pulled off her helmet, and she barely managed to clip it to her belt, taking a handful of steps forward until she’d halved the distance between her and her son. This was the first time she had laid eyes on him since he was born, and by the gods he’d grown up so fast. That was evident nowhere more than the display of evident telekinetic strength, and despite it all that brought a smile to her face, just being able to know he was here and safe.

Slowly she bent to one knee, holding out her hand in silent offering, having forgotten everything else about her surroundings except for him, wanting nothing more than to reach out and wrap him in her arms but knowing full well he barely knew her, if he even did at all. This was a child that had been ripped from his mother’s arms before there was any chance to form that bond, and chances were he hated her for something he didn’t understand, not that she blamed him any.

“Ad’ika…”

[member="Val Ticon"]

 

[Val Ticon]

When the helmet came off Val saw the last individual in the galaxy he’d ever expected to see. Usually one holds onto very little from their memories as a youth but a mixture of the force and stories told the boy of who this was. The adolescent reached up seizing the front of his black robes in a death grip. Knuckles turning white as his fingers dug into the fabric giving something for the boy to grab onto.

The muscles in Val’s jaw tightened as his azure eyes raised to meet the dark ones of his mother. How had she found him? Why was she here? To rub it in his face? She came with Ador to the temple but in all these years never thought to come to see her own son? Did he really mean that little to her? The thoughts ate away and dug at the Jedi’s resolve. It dredged up the nightmares of a youth, the fear of abandonment, of being despised, of being worthless.

No matter how much one learns as a Jedi it doesn’t turn off their emotions and in this moment Val felt so many. His heart hammered in his chest, his face flushing as rage continued to build reaching a pinnacle where tears began to pry themselves free of his eyes and retreat down his cheeks. Eyes bloodshot, Val had to clench his eyes closed fighting against the throbbing in his head that hammered harder than a war drum.

The nuclear furnace of emotions within Val came pouring out as his own hand came up but not to grab onto Keira’s. No, it was an open-palmed slap aimed at the woman’s cheek with all the strength the boy could muster. A woman who had abandoned him, who cared more about a group of warmongers than him, that had altered herself in their name.

The slap would be hard and loud enough to cause it to echo across the hanger. His vision blurry from the tears that refused to halt their progress. Val wanted to scream, to say so much to the woman that had left him but the words wouldn’t come out. Instead, he settled on rushing across the hanger to a nearby speeder bike that the boy hopped onboard and with a flick of his wrist brought to life shooting him off towards Coronet city.

[member="Keira Priest"]

 

[Keira Priest]

It was something she didn’t blame him for, couldn’t blame him for, because Keira would have done the same. She could only guess what he’d been taught growing up, what stories he’d been told about the Mandalorians, how his mother’s absence had been explained away. No doubt he’d learned to hate her, but she’d felt much the same when her parents died, for that was its own sort of abandonment. Children picked up on the attitudes of those surrounding them all too easily, and this was no different. He just needed time, she told herself. Time she was finally able to give him.

With a wave to Ador and a final beckoning to stay out of trouble, she boarded her ship to catch up with the lone speeder bike that tore across the planet to the capital city. His trajectory was something it took her awhile to notice, and when she finally caught on to his destination her heart dropped as her jaw clenched. This was the same graveyard where she’d cried over her parents’ graves, where her older siblings had found her curled up sleeping between their headstones numerous times. And now he was there too, perhaps to mourn a family he never had.

Landing on an unclaimed plot of land some distance away, she entered the cemetery on foot, memory carrying her to the family plot. It broke her heart to see him there, alone among the dead. He belonged with her, among family and clan, not clinging to a name that had long been forgotten for all the right reasons.

She approached from the side so he could see her, stopping just over a foot away before the graves of her parents. Without looking at him she spoke, “Y’know, I used to come here a lot when I was your age. I’d just lost my parents, and I didn’t feel like I had anywhere else to go. I know you’re probably feeling the same right now, but I promise you it isn’t true. I never meant to leave you, ad’ika. Your father took you from me when you were just a baby, and wouldn’t let me see you. I didn’t know where you were, didn’t know what he was doing with you. But I never stopped missing you, not once.

“I’m here now, and I promise you I’m never leaving again.”

[member="Val Ticon"]

 

[Val Ticon]

Sitting down before the grave of his grandfather, legs curled up and head pressed to his knees Val openly wept. Why did she have to come back? Why now? Just when the sting of his father leaving had begun to wane here she’d come and open old wounds. The boys bodies were covered in grime, and dirt a small hole only a few feet off to the side from where he sat. He heard the footsteps as they approached. The sound of those heavy booted feet. How he hated them.

Why’d she come? Did she not get the gist that he wanted nothing to do with her? Val just couldn’t understand why she was following him. It was 11 years too late for her to want a part in his life. He’d already lived without her. Keira’s words caused Val’s face to flush turning red from the raw fury that clung at his insides. “Don’t you dare fucking lie to me!” Val screamed rising up the barrel of an archaic slugthrower aimed directly at his mother. “You were supposed to be a warrior! Supposed to be strong and you couldn’t stop him?! No you were just too content with your other children to care weren’t you?”

Standing his ground tears continuing to stream down his cheeks, slight hiccups coming as he fought the tears Val’s bloodshot eyes rose up to Keira’s. “Or perhaps you’re so obsessed with those kath hounds you call family that you forgot about your other kids. Those warmongers! What good have they ever done for the galaxy! You take on their name over that of your own real family!”

One hand keeping the pistol aimed Val took the other and wiped wildly at his face to rid himself of the tears. Jedi didn’t cry, Jedi didn’t know rage, but he was feeling all these things. “He left me just like you did. I don’t need either of you!”

[member="Keira Priest"]