Private Doing It Backwards

[Rik Perris]

Grandmaster's Office
Shiraya's Sanctuary, Naboo

Picking up from earlier...

After the whole debacle on the training terrace, Rik had wiled the hours away, meandering the temple, wandering into town and back. He didn't know Naboo well, outside of what Theed used to be like before the First Cataclysm, and even then he only spent a handful of months there as a fresh knight during his nineteenth year, sorting out his next move. His faith in the Order that had instilled the foundation of the Jedi he was, had been shaken, if not broken, back then.

But the year since his return had begun to force him to revise some of those assessments... not on the act that had driven him away a decade past, as such, but the belief in how far such a disease had spread. The New Jedi Order of the time may have leaned hard into one way of operating, sure, but that may have been a necessity of what they faced under the threat of the Brotherhood; the Order of now had swung too far to the opposite end. There was no balance.

That wasn't what he was on Naboo for, now, though, but it was Jedi business, nonetheless.

Later in the afternoon, on the edge of evening when he figured Briana would at least have a reprieve from or be finished with most of her duties, Rik found his way to her office after asking for where he might find her - the location of her office or that she even had one wasn't included in the tour - and picking up some dinner. He remembered that she liked spicy food from early into getting to know her, when he'd had a particular reason to suggest eating it at the time.

He didn't have the same motives now, but spice did just as much for cognition as anything else that was affected by the increased blood flow. And who didn't like a chile'd Seoulian noodle? But when he reached her office, she just appeared to be leaving. He couldn't begrudge her wanting to put an end to this day, or any day, but...

"Want to stick around a little longer?" He spoke up before she could key in what he guessed was a security code, "Got something I figured you might like," he said, dangling the takeout bag with a fist, "and you owe me a 'later'."

'You owe me a later, not a tomorrow' - a phrase he started using to pin down people he sought to talk to for their own good, back in the PMC he used to operate with after he'd made up his mind, all those years ago. It was either come willingly, or get hauled in and sat down, then. Those were the days.

He put on a smile for good measure.

Briana Sal-Soren​

 

[Briana Sal-Soren]

Outfit: XoXo | Equipment: Lightsaber, Echo Stone | Tag: Rik Perris
​

For the first time in the last few months, Briana was actually looking forward to going home and spending the evening alone. Between Rik dropping the emotional bombshell that he knew about her parents and the debacle with Cerys, Lysander and Zaiya, Briana's brain felt like it'd been wrung out and left to dry under a scorching sun, so the chance to sit in silence and let the chaos of the day fade into the background was...highly appealing.

Her hand hovered over the keypad to her office, the other braced against the doorframe, when the familiar timbre of a deep voice and the scent of something spicy wafted from a takeout bag and drifted directly under her nose, drawing her attention. Unbidden memories of that week on Hapes a few years ago came rushing back: the late-night rendezvous, the small, indulgent rituals with Rik that she'd found comfort in, if only briefly.

Still caught between wanting to leave and feeling too tired to fight it, Briana finally exhaled and let her shoulders droop, turning on her heel to face Rik head-on, only to be immediately met with the site of him holding up the bag of food like some kind of peace offering.

"You have terrible timing, you know that?" The humor in her tone was faint, lips quirking upward at the edges. "But you're right, I did promise you a later, and I guess I also still owe you one for Coruscant...so, sure...I'll stick around." Keying in the code for her office, Briana waited for the transparasteel door to open, then gestured for him to follow her inside. The space was more functional than personal, though a small vase of flowers and a holo of her siblings sat on her desk, hinting at her attempt, however poor, to make the office feel more homey and less...clinical.

"But," she looked pointedly at the bag, hoping he'd sense her tone and realize her words for the light jest it was. "just so we're clear... if you're expecting a repeat of what happened on Hapes, you're barking up an overly stressed-out and sleepless tree."

Dropping into the chair behind her desk, Briana raked a hand through the loose strands of dark hair that she typically kept neatly pinned back, only half aware of how undone she probably looked. "So? I'm guessing you didn't go out of your way to find my office, just for a little chit-chat."

​

 

[Rik Perris]

Grandmaster's Office
Shiraya's Sanctuary, Naboo

"You have terrible timing, you know that?"

Rik’s smile cracked open: it would be too easy to shoot right back, but he wasn’t about to set the wrong tone. His smile mellowed and instead, Rik waited, lowering the takeout bag while she relented and keyed in the code to gain access to the office she had just locked up a couple of moments before.

He followed her into the sparsely decorated office, standing on the other side of the desk while she rounded it, and rounded back to him, as he placed the bag on the desk and started to pull out the seat in front of him. He had been just about to slip into that seat, but she started up again, this time needling him in jest.

He put his hands up in mock surrender, his face painted with a mildly amused, if pained look, “You wound me,” he said plaintively, but the light smirk he wore put the lie to his tone, and he returned his hands to the back of the chair. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

What kind of guy did she take him for? In a temple? Seriously? Rik gave the woman across from him a narrow look, then finally slipped into the chair on this side of the desk. She seemed to want to get right down to business with how she prodded him impatiently, so he went about unpacking the food and setting a box in front of him and her, with a set of disposable chopsticks on top of each box.

“Napkins in the bag,” he advised, going about pulling the lid off and starting to mix up the noodly contents in the box, “uh-uh, not a social call,” Rik lifted the now-soiled chopsticks out of the noodles and pointed them at her, “but before I get to that… I’ll be honest,” he stuck the chopsticks back into the mass of noodles and vegetables and protein, “when you told me how you felt about your dad and what he'd done, I understood it.”

Maybe he did. Rik pulled some noodles up, but went into explaining a little before stuffing his face.

“Y’know, I was adopted by my old man when my mom remarried?” Of course she didn’t know, but now she did. He slurped some noodles into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully, and swallowing. “Man that fathered me died when I was a little guy, but learning about who he used to be? Reconciling his imperial background with how I was raised, what I believed, letting go of the shame?" Rik gave his head a little shake. "That took a long while.”

He lowered the chopsticks, burying the tips amidst the noodles, and gave Briana a frank look.

"So, no judgement. I get it."

Briana Sal-Soren​

 

[Briana Sal-Soren]

Outfit: XoXo | Equipment: Lightsaber, Echo Stone | Tag: Rik Perris ​

Briana listened in quiet contemplation, but didn't immediately respond as she let his words settle, let herself sit with them, keeping her features schooled as best she could — even as something inside her bristled at the idea that he thought he understood.

Clearly, he'd had his own struggles—and the revelation about his father was certainly something she never would have expected from what she knew about him—but there was something deeply personal, deeply tangled, about the way she'd spent so much of her life trying to be someone she wasn't just to keep her father's approval. How many times growing up had people told her that she was just like him? How often had she wanted to be? Prided herself about that?

Rik was lucky that his father had been gone, a ghost to reconcile with through secondhand memories and stories. Baros Sal-Soren had been there, a constant presence in her life, guiding her like a morning star, shaping her ideals. A man she'd once thought hung the moon itself, adored him like no other — who'd gone and thrown away his family, gotten himself and his own wife killed, all because he'd decided to take a strong point on everything she'd ever been taught was wrong.

How could Rik possibly begin to understand that? How did anyone understand that? Part of her wanted to confront him with the question, but instead, Briana exhaled slowly and reached for one of the containers. Popping the lid open, she jammed her chopsticks into the noodles and flipped them around a few times, until she got a decent bite. "Hmm," she said, shaking her head a bit, brows raised. It was easier to pretend it didn't bother her than to try and unpack it all. That was going to need a lot more than a single evening. Days... weeks, potentially. "I can't say I saw that coming..."

She lifted the still-steaming noodles out from the container and took her first bite, giving herself a moment to think, to debate on how best she wanted to answer him. She swallowed. "I guess that explains why you—" She cut herself off, rolling her lips together before deciding to change tracks. "I guess you do get it. A little." In the least, she could truthfully admit that.

"It was hard, then?" she asked, blue eyes reverting from the distraction of the container in her lap and back to Rik. Her voice grew a tad quieter and more introspective than before. "Letting go of the shame?"

​

 

[Rik Perris]

Grandmaster's Office
Shiraya's Sanctuary, Naboo

While Briana thought over how to respond, Rik took the opportunity to eat more from the box of spicy noodles and vegetables in front of him, chew, swallow, repeat, while she tried to find the right words to use. He looked up each time she started and stopped; utterly paused, wondering, when she trailed off, until she finally resolved that maybe he did understand some.

"It was hard, then?" she asked, blue eyes reverting from the distraction of the container in her lap and back to Rik. Her voice grew a tad quieter and more introspective than before. "Letting go of the shame?"

​

Rik finished chewing the latest bite of his food, and set the chopsticks into the dwindling pile of noodles, swallowing; thinking for a moment, how to talk about this thing he'd laid to rest years ago. A time a decade and a half ago that shored up his unshakable resolve and went a long way to solidifying who he was.

"It challenged my beliefs about myself, at a time when I was still coming to terms with my Master's death," he settled back into the chair, "I was fifteen, almost sixteen, still figuring things out and my place in it all like any kid; my birthday was coming up, and my mom thought I was old enough to know, but she was hesitant due to my situation."

Rik crossed his arms.

"It was several months after the loss of Master Edic; I thought I could handle it, whatever it was, and I convinced her of that… but I misjudged how much I still needed his guidance and influence. It was more than I could work through alone, when I was still making my way through the trauma of loss.” The first of many: a fact of life, and an occupational hazard for a soldier. “Came out the other side with time, and guidance from other mentors. Altogether, some hard but valuable lessons that were accepted as part of my trials, a couple years later."

A fact that spoke to the challenge of that time of his life; the trials demanded much of a Jedi, and these better set him up to be able to weather the difficult decisions and greater challenges in the more than a decade since his knighting, including leaving the New Jedi, and walking a path that intersected with the woman sitting across from him now.

“That was a rough year, but I wouldn't be the same without it,” he began to summarize, unfolding his arms and sitting up to continue eating, “without internalizing that we are greater than the sum of our parts,” Rik looked up at her, while picking up the chopsticks again and a waterfall of noodles, with them, “and that no one of us is an island.”

He glanced down at the noodle box, took the next bit into his mouth that was waiting on his chopsticks, and chewed. Unless she had any other questions, he would leave it at that. They had other matters to discuss.

Briana Sal-Soren​