Private And I Should Play the Fool

[Gerwald Lechner]

Location: KO Headquarters -- Training Facility
Wearing: xxx
Tag: Alkor Centaris

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The sun dipped below the horizon as Alkor spoke. It was the end of one day, and when the sun rose afresh it would be the beginning of something new. Gerwald took a deep breath in through his nostrils. Once again Alkor began to impart words, knowledge of some kind. The difference of his words compared to that of the Sith made sense. The pride of Darth Prazutis would be his undoing. Gerwald would be underestimated because of how easy he had been taken advantage of and tortured. Tossed aside like a tag doll as he had been, Gerwald wondered if the Sith would even consider him a challenge. If the Sith were blind to their weaknesses, then Gerwald would do everything within his power to use that blindness to strike out and take his revenge.​

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"And my anger does burn, Master," Gerwald said without realizing the term he had just used in regards to Alkor. "And it has for some time, long before Prazutis stole the things he did from me."​

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His words were true, and Alkor would know it. The danger Gerwald faced was being consumed by so much anger and hatred that he became his enemy. This path, philosophy, Alkor had imparted it would be Gerwald's salvation. The chain's of his past had loosened, they no longer gripped him as tightly as they had even a few moments before. Of course they would not fall from him overnight, nor should they. If his past was truly a weapon, then Gerwald simply needed to learn how to wield it.​

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"Yet he used them so easily. He conjured a version of her, killing her in front of me over and over and over. I had to watch her die more times than I can count, and every time I was helpless to do anything about it."​

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Gerwald breathed in again. Pausing as he shifted his weight.​

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"It was like he took my memories and added to them. How I am supposed to fight that? Everytime I watched her die... it hurt, more painful than the time before."​

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He was ready to break, ready to accept that moving on meant steeling himself in a way that ensured Prazutis, nor anyway, could ever use his feelings against him ever again. To do that though, he had to admit to someone the one thing he had never said out loud. It wasn't that he never told Naedira how he felt, Gerwald had never uttered the words save for when he thought he was speaking to the air.​

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"Alkor I..." Gerwald choked back the emotion that threatened to overtake him, "I loved her. Memories are attached with feelings, and it was my feelings he took advantage of. How do you feel without having those feelings turned against you?"​

 

[Alkor Centaris]

"To say that you will feel nothing would be to do you a disservice," Alkor answered honestly. "As I said, our emotions are part of who we are. They do not simply disappear. There may be a part of you that finds hatred, even rage at the insults and curses others hurl at you. You cannot control what they do or say."

He did not blink as he matched Gerwald's gaze. Alkor offered no apologies or sympathy. The admission from the other man was not so that the Jen'jidai would pity him. It was for Gerwald Lechner, from himself, to open the wound so that he could clean it and close it properly in due time.

"What we can control is how we respond. We do not jump at idle provocation. Nor do we simply accept insults and slights against us. When the enemy understands that he has no power over us, the enemy begins to hesitate, back down, and dissemble. An enemy who's power comes from the certainty of weakness is an enemy with no true strength."

He had always been, in the eyes of the Confederacy, a man who feared nothing. Alkor rose to any challenge and fought any enemy. He did not think himself peerless.

Alkor made himself thus.

"You will learn to fight on your own terms," he assured Gerwald. "Not your enemy's. And so, what you feel is yours alone. Nothing can take from you that which you do not freely give."

Gerwald Lechner