Private I Was Wrong

[Iris Arani]

"No, you need to decide whether you are or not. You keep burying yourself in all this grime and mud and slap away any hand trying to help you get out." Before she knew it she was on her feet. Glaring at him again. The fuzzy feeling of the drink still burned in the back of her mind. Probably why she even bothered to get up. She took another drink, longer this time.

"I can't see my own colors, but I sure can see yours. Stop trying to stifle out that warmth. .. I don't want to loose you too." The glare was gone as she turned off instead. Took another, long drink from the bottle. Finished it before letting the bottle rest against her leg.

"I don't want you to keep pushing me away."

Corin Trenor

 

[Corin Trenor]

His features soured, a bitter touch fell across his mouth as sullen eyes took over. Reflection was far from a used tool in the limited emotional arsenal that Corin carried with him, tossed aside or into the spares. Somewhere, abandoned and left to rot and rust in the rain. The acid rain. Burned all it touched, and those nerves around a compassionate heart scorched and scattered with such little left to be found.

"It's... It's different paths, Iris." Corin protested with folded arms that shielded him, "You, you're a Jedi. It's what you're meant to be, who you're meant to be."

A brief wave of a hand wafted over Iris as the vigilante said as much, then across himself too.

"Me? It's not who I am, not who I can ever be anymore. It's not about pushing someone away, maybe I'm just not the same person you think I am."

Iris Arani

 

[Iris Arani]

"It's not a different path. Just.. Feels like it. Especially with the shit show of the senate." Ah right. She grumbled, frowned. She hated thinking about them, about the politics.

"I'm not trying to fight you. I just.. I dunno. I hate seeing you hurt. Or like.. This. Feeling stuck."

Corin Trenor

 

[Corin Trenor]

It seemed as if most meets left them in some sort of battle with one another, maybe a sour mix. Too much of a clash on the fundamentals. The Denonite was tired of it, bored. He made his share of enemies on the streets of Denon, never needed an additional off of them. Iris least of all

"I promise you that I am fine," Corin said in a half-truth, uncertain if that tormented mind ever felt more than medium interference in life. "I am neither hurt or stuck, I prefer it here. It's orthodox, to say the least, but this Jedi watchman job sometimes needs that."

Denon was in a hard spot. It had one, but one could never cover it all. Corin took second shift, and so there were two Jedi Watchman of Denon.

Iris Arani

 

[Iris Arani]

"I thought you said you didn't lie." She wasn't actually sure if he was, but maybe she was just hoping for her own sake. She sighed, tossed the bottle she had still somewhere where it wouldn't be in the way. Plopped down on the couch again.

"So you're still a Jedi, then."

Corin Trenor

 

[Corin Trenor]

"I'm telling my truth, honest."

Corin motioned across, nestled into the couch beside her. In the best of times, the man that flirted with titles and positions found Iris disagreeable. "By technicality," his voice was low and honest, unlike those that dwelled in these cities. "It would raise too many questions if I simply vanished and someone else appeared where I lived, dispensed justice."

The Jedi were a corruptible institution, Corin believed, free in their reign to do as they so please. A system to their own. Perhaps his cynical nature brought forwards again, like a candle that refused to die out. It flickered and wavered, but never died. It would be so merciful.

"People don't ask too many questions." His face contorted with thought, though settled soon after. "I hear you're the next Noble, eh?"

For all his blatant disregard for Jedi life and duties, even those of that circle, Corin was never free from the news. The news and their beloved Jedi saviours.

Iris Arani

 

[Iris Arani]

Well that made sense. Ish. Who was keeping him in the Order despite him not being there? The mind he'd helped shape to fight here was already trying to figure that gap out. Till he mentioned the whole Noble thing anyway. That, and the buzz.

"Next Noble? What are people saying about me that makes you think that of all things?" Iris just about laughed. Dismissively. Embarrassedly. Nervously. Being compared to the woman she idolized wasn't what she expected from Corin of all people.

"I don't think I'm the next her or anything. I certainly don't have like, her chest or anything. Or her height. Or hair. Or badassness. Or skill."

Corin Trenor

 

[Corin Trenor]

"You feel the need to compare yourself to others often?" Uttered words so full of irony, all Corin ever did was exist in the shadow of Dagon. "You fill the role well enough." He assured after a moments worth of silence, "It means you're a Jedi, Iris. If not now, then soon enough."

Corin looked over her with a smile tinged with amusement, "Chest aside."

Iris Arani

 

[Iris Arani]

"Kinda, yeah. How am I supposed to know who I am if I don't have something to compare to?" Part of who she was was just bits and pieces of what she saw in others. An amalgamation of people as she tried to learn what was actually her. At least now she'd figured out some of it.

The compliment though, it brought a small smile to her face. One that faded into a slight frown instead. She glanced at herself before letting out a sigh. "Is that why you don't ever seem attracted to me?"

Corin Trenor

 

[Corin Trenor]

With a tensed brow, narrowed eyes and a mouth agape, Corin could only stare dumbfounded. "What?" He blurted.

Iris Arani

 

[Iris Arani]

That wasn't what she expected. Iris frowned just a little as she again waved her hand towards the fridge, pulled out another bottle. Barely caught it as the thing flew towards her hand and fumbled just a little while she tried to open it.

Not quite drunk, but certainly getting there.

"Nevermind."

Corin Trenor

 

[Corin Trenor]

"No, no." Corin dismissed with the wave of his callous-riddled hand, a touch of humour fell across his lips as the rush of awkwardness startled his once calmed mind. Perhaps there were moments, he thought on in less than the blink of an eye, when the two were younger; lives so full of careless joy, thrust into the lethal unknown with youthful pride to carry them onto the next mission, and then the next. It was for Corin, at least. Drunk on the skills afforded to him, now honed with the added bitter touch those few others cautioned too many times before. He shook his head with thinly held concern, "That's not the type of question you throw out at random, not the type you dismiss either."

His voice was small, quiet with hush. For all of a second, dark eyes met the duracrete floor beneath them. Harsh and brittle, as if some odd reflection of Corin and all that lurked within. "Besides," it was a simple stare between sips, "I never said I wasn't."

Iris Arani

 

[Iris Arani]

"I didn't throw it out at random. .. And I can dismiss it." She muttered, mostly into the bottle she took another sip. Smaller, though. She didn't actually want to get dead drunk. Just a little tipsy. Forget the problems for a little while. Iris blinked, though. Glancing towards him for a moment, then back to the bottle.

"Oh. Good to know."

Corin Trenor

 

[Corin Trenor]

"So, what, that's been on your mind for a while then?" He asked with a lofted brow, features twisted with curious confusion. Half-seated on the rear of the couch, Corin leaned forwards with arms folded, as if to shield himself from words like armour. The constant voice with chatter and bluster of Rafe was ever constant on Denon women, while Corin remained too withdrawn to hold something down for more than two months.

Iris Arani

 

[Iris Arani]

"Yeah. Kinda. I dunno." She huffed, practically threw up her hands. She did, but stopped once she remembered she was still holding a bottle. Might've splashed a bit, hard to tell. Rather than think about that she took another swig. No, she stopped midsip and just set it down on the table. Stared at it.

"People have started asking me out. I turned them down, usually. But then they get all weird and uncomfortable and I don't like seeing those kinds of colors so now I'm goin' on dates that'll be suuper awkward."

Corin Trenor

 

[Corin Trenor]

He thoughtfully wondered as to whether it was some ploy, an act to inspire jealousy. Though the act of such immediately burdened Corin with the question as to whether such was born of jealousy in the first place, now thrust into some endless and cyclical loop. Corin breathed at length, unwittingly, only to catch himself a second afterwards with a sudden bout of diverted attention thrown towards Iris, "That's good." He started, to then remember the second and larger portion of her sentence and rushed to fill the space she could otherwise fill.

"I mean, that people ask you out." Corin stood and sauntered forwards, closer to the fridge with an empty bottle in hand. He tossed a curious look over his shoulder, "How come you turn 'em down?"

Iris Arani

 

[Iris Arani]

"Kai. When he turned human he got real obsessive. I haven't even gone to see him cause I'm pretty sure whatever he's doing to get better'll get ruined if I do." She leaned back, pulling her knees to her chest. Frowning.

"Relationships are supposed to be equal, right? I dunno if people view me as equal. It's either wayyyy up on a pedestal or lookin' down."

Corin Trenor

 

[Corin Trenor]

"Likely not," Corin mused aloud with a mouth that ran faster than his mind, for a first. Impulsive as Corin often was, it was rare that such actions were verbal - more inclined to be physical, dangerous. Injuring. "But if you're after a relationship with someone, I'm sure that will be the last focus on their minds."

He was a deceptive drunk. Even as the influence took hold, his voice was composed and his movements never indicated intoxication. That said, he moved slowly and surely, with little to no cause for a faint wobble or misstep.

"You're an equal to me." He said.

Iris Arani

 

[Iris Arani]

"Probably shouldn't even be somethin' I think about. Jedi, relationships, they're kinda bad from what I've seen." So many went bad and left the Jedi in them in terrible places. Or maybe just the relationships she did see. Like two. Lots of others went well, didn't they? Valery was happy in her own, even after the death of her husband. She frowned, staring at the bottle way more intensely than needed.

"You're an equal to me."

That. That got her laughing. She burst out into a giggle, glancing over to him as he carefully walked his way back. "Shuttuup. You're drunk. You've never seen me as your equal."

Corin Trenor

 

[Corin Trenor]

"Even if I was," Corin admitted in denial, "Fact remains."

Few Jedi once climbed the pedestal and seemed impossible to tear down. To rise above the rest, to be the best of them all. Corin once believed in that ladder, in that someone could be there at all. Since the seclusion to Denon, a life as normal as he could lead took hold, and with it there were no betters. No one was better than Corin, the vigilante often believed, so convinced that if it ever came to blows, those hardened hands of his could take whatever foe he stumbled across. His belief in the mission, his mission. It was more important than the so-called peace to be kept, with his own so full of direct action at the source. Maybe Corin even thought he was better than most. But Iris, not her. Her goals as pure as his own, albeit with better methods.

He set a hand over her shoulder, "Well, you're not better than me." Corin warmly smiled.

Iris Arani