Let the wookie win

[Trextan Voidstalker]

[member="Taheera Sollo"]

"Huh, you're quite well attuned to those thing," he said. Apparently he shouted with the Force instead of listening. But that's what you learned when the Sith taught you to channel your anger into the Force. "I think as long as I don't start bleeding through my shirt it's probably fine. Besides there's a medic on hand and an exceptional hospital within a short walk."

A waiter walked past with a tray of food for the next booth over. "Oh goodness, real food," he sighed. His stomach seemed to wake up at the smell of grilled meat. "Sorry," he said with his attention snapping back to Taheera. He opened his mouth to speak, but it was obvious he was mulling over his response. He knew where he had come from, even if that world had been torn down around him.

"Clones are normally grown with that kind of stuff right? Normally they come out as kids with the right kind of things sort of programmed in. Sorry that's probably a pretty disrespectful thing to say. Everyone is a mix of nature and nurture right." He sailed smoothly right past the topic of how much of Jacen he had come programmed with.

"Erm, do you even know who you were cloned from or why?"

 

[Taheera Sollo]

[member="Trextan Voidstalker"]

She laughed. "Yeah, not sure how real they are but those friend onion rings smell amazing." Myrtle ellipses tracked back down to the menu. Foot accidentally bumped his beneath the table. She shifted straighter in her seat.

"Yeah. I think so. Maybe I'm more like a computer than you and your arm," she teased quietly. "I know some. It was a Jedi master healer with my same name but spelled a little differently. T-a-h-i-r-a instead of Taheera. And I know they programmed some of her husband in me too, Je'gan Or'lan....something....I always get his last name wrong. But I found out...erm...," she was embarrassed again, clearly. "Some Sith Lord had me cloned, I mean made. So...yeah. Not sure why. Makes me nervous most days."

The waiter came by for their orders.

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

[member="Taheera Sollo"]

"Erm, yeah I can imagine it would," he said emphatically. Trextan had thought his own family situation had become complicated, but on reflection it was quite vanilla compared to something like that. He did note that she said her husband. So at least whatever had happened had left her as an entirely separate entity.

"And I thought I was having trouble working out who I am suppose to be. If you're a mix I suppose they're more like parents."

He rolled one finger down the menu. It didn't occur to him that the last statement was perhaps a little rude. She had a rebellious spirit he wouldn't have expected from a Jedi healer. He'd seen it in her challenging attitude in the mechanic factory and again in breaking him out of the hospital. Perhaps he wasn't doomed to become as bland as Jacen to fit in.

 

[Taheera Sollo]

[member="Trextan Voidstalker"]

She laughed. "Yeah, I guess, kinda." She stopped herself from saying something too dark, like, parents that're dead, she'd never met or meet, etc. She leaned forward a little. "It's okay. You having trouble finding out who you are is totally justified too, you know. It's not a competition for who has the most messed up past or even situations that you can compare." A small smile.


The waiter tapped his foot impatiently. "Oh right. Uh, I'll have the nerf burger. Medium-well."

"You want a salad with that?"

"No way, I'll take the fries and add an order of onion rings," she grinned a little sheepishly. What?! The onion rings were to share. She waited for Trex to order and after he did, she had a follow-up question.

"So forget the past and forget everything now. If you could do anything you wanted in the whole 'verse, right now, what would it be?"

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

[member="Taheera Sollo"]

"Yeah, the same but with the blue cheese please," Trextan said before handing back his menu. He didn't realise that when he didn't think about the arm it was fairly easy to use. The adaptive neural network within it was learning how to be controlled as fast as he was subconsciously using it.

He looked back over at Taheera and grinned. It was a normally question, even if it did warrant some thought. Normal was good.

"I mean that's fair, I was winning the competition anyway," he replied. It was actually quite a macabre response and he felt a flash of guilt for it. Perhaps it wasn't quite time to try humour yet.

"I'd go somewhere where I had no cares. One of those resort worlds with nothing but beaches and booze."

 

[Taheera Sollo]

[member="Trextan Voidstalker"]

"Pffft." She snorted at his 'winning' comment. Ever since she met him, they'd shared a competitive edge. A little at the factory. A little competition was a good thing, though. Whoever would be Trex's rehab person would be thanking her in the morning.

Might save her from getting fired if they got caught.

"Wow. Beaches and booze huh?" A chestnut-brow lofted as her purple lips twitched. "Are you even old enough to drink legally?" Fingers drummed once on the table at the playful jab.

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

[member="Taheera Sollo"]

"Ouch. You didn't have to take the competition jibe that badly," he replied.

"It varies by system, I'm seventeen. So i shall clarify my previous reply and say a holiday planet or moon where they have fairly relaxed laws about this kind of thing. Besides it's the escape more than the drinking."

Ha laughed and watched another tray of food go past that wasn't there's with mournful eyes.

"Where would you go?" He asked.

 

[Taheera Sollo]

[member="Trextan Voidstalker"]

"True," she took a sip of her water and got her laugh under control. Looking up, the waiter stopped by and plopped two big plate fulls of food in front of them - complete with the onion rings! "Mmmm," she breathed in. Fried food was a treat. The healer tended to stick to the healthier fare.

Reaching over she took an onion ring and munched on it.

"Where would I go?" Chesntut brow lofted between bites. It was a good question. If she could go anywhere to....forget all her worries, nightmares, and ghosts....she'd probably be very much like Trex and choose that. But then again.

She swallowed.

"Maybe Yavin Four. There's a lot of history there and I'd like to check it out." There were other places on her list but that was the first that came to mind.

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

[member="Taheera Sollo"]

Trextan thought back to his history lessons as he blew on a hot fry. He didn't do this for very long, tossing it into his mouth to start eating whilst it was still uncomfortably hot. Oh that was very much better. Hospital food was all condensed and reheated rations.

Being a fussy sort, he took the top off his burger to sift through the layers for anything he wasn't so fond off. There were a couple of thin slices of a root vegetable he'd never cared for so he took them out.

Something struck up. He was trying to think of Yavin when it was the Y in ABY that was frequently used to measure time since the empire had started to collapse.

"Oh of course, where the Death Star got destroyed. The first one anyway. Before the second. And that other thing the First Order had." He frowned and tilted his head to one side. "They really like moons with giant lasers."

 

[Taheera Sollo]

[member="Trextan Voidstalker"]

"Yeah, exactly," grabbing her fork she was a little bold and reached over, stabbing his discarded veggies. "You mind?" They were already moving over to her plate, so he better not. Ha! She piled them on her burger along with one of the onion rings. Now the tricky part, picking everything up without any spillage.

As if performing surgery, she cradled both sides of the enlarged hamburger bun and brought it to her parted purple lips.

HOMNOMNOM NOMNOMNOM.

Just a little sauce dripped out the back and onto her plate. Oooops, and a pickle. Not too bad. Maybe this wasn't the best food to order on their first....outing? Date? Nah, couldn't be a date, right?! Definitely not a date. He had to ask for it to be a date. They were just hanging out.

Her thoughts quickly shifted before her green skin could turn pink. He probably just thought of her as a friend, anyway.

She took another bite, chewed and swallowed.

"Mmmm, really good. Yours okay?"

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

[member="Taheera Sollo"]

Trextan was far away from thoughts of what Taheera thought about him, or the reverse, at this moment in time. His focus was on the food and would be until he'd got a few bites down.

He held the burger with both hands but the new hand tore at some of the bottom bun and he had to make an emergency landing. He opted for knife and fork instead. This of course, brought fresh challenges. Coordinating the two hands together was difficult, but only because he was thinking about it.

He managed to get a cut across all the layers of his burger to his mouth. All the flavours exploded, made all the more vivid by the week of bland, chewy hospital food. Trextan rolled his eyes in Taheera's direction.

Bringing up the back of his hand to cover his mouth he said earnestly: "Thank you."

 

[Taheera Sollo]

[member="Trextan Voidstalker"]

Oh yeah. The way his eyes glazed over a bit with that first bite and how his face lit up. Definitely good. She couldn't help the twitch of her purple lips upwards into a genuine smile.

"Sure. No problem. Just glad you're feeling well enough to be out and taking that for a test run," chin tipped toward his arm. "Pretty sure you'll ace any physical therapy tomorrow. Maybe you'll have to act worse off than you are so they don't start asking questions," she laughed for a second, not being serious. He'd better show them how BA he already was.

"How much longer do you have at the hospital anyway? And you...uh, gonna stay out of the field for awhile?"

She went back to her fries, onion rings, and burger.

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

[member="Taheera Sollo"]

Just the first mouthful was enough to sate him for a moment, to allow his mind to return to the conversation at hand. The mirialan had told him quite a lot about her past already. Admittedly he had droned on far too much about his own. She’d brought him some food, some company and now snuck him out for some real food. He didn’t even know how much trouble this could land her in.

Her question derailed his train of thought on the matter. A more serious expression crossed his face as he obviously picked some seeds out of his teeth with his tongue, mouth closed. He looked down at the arm, turning it over to see the sealed compartments designed to hold weaponry.

“The first question: I’m not sure. I think after Kaeshana they need the beds and want to treat me as an outpatient. But the second one…” he drifted off. “I don’t even know how I ended up in a war really. I wake up with a soldier’s prosthetic. And you know what the worst part is? I think I want to go back and fight and I think he knew I would. And that… that makes me angry. And it probably shouldn’t.”

 

[Taheera Sollo]

[member="Trextan Voidstalker"]

Greasy fingers were wiped on a napkin. She took a sip of water, straw cradled around her purple lips. Sitting a back, the healer listened quietly to Trex. He just needed someone to be a sounding board, to verbally process with someone.

Luckily for him, she was good at doing that. And had been blessed to know and have several solid friends who'd done it for her.

"No," she said quietly. "I think anger is a natural feeling to have. Someone made a choice for you even if it was the choice YOU might've made. And it's your dad, you're still getting to know him and maybe it's more unsettling to know that he might know you better than you give him credit for - even if you're not ready for that yet."

She took another sip of water.

"Have you talked to him about any of this?"

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

[member="Taheera Sollo"]

Trxtan glowered at his food in response. Jacen didn't know him, he couldn't know him. The Marshal had chosen the fight over his son and now he had no right to know him. He'd even admitted to having failed Trextan, so how could be be that he would know best? His mother had been right. Despite going to fight a war Jacen had been a coward. The difficult problems of a wife and son he didn't really know how to handle had been the difficult battle for him not the war.

"Sometimes," he replied. He drew in a deep breath through his nose, but was clearly recessing back into brooding once more. "But he's always so..."

Trextan leaned back and emphatically waved his left hand. "Frustrating." The hypocrisy was lost on the teenager. He turned to his burger. Eating was easier than discussing his father. More hypocrisy.

 

[Taheera Sollo]

[member="Trextan Voidstalker"]

"Hm," napkin came up to wipe at her purple lips. To the empath, Trex was an open book. She wasn't trying to pry and see his emotions but he wasn't making that very easy with the way his frustration and broodiness wafted off him.

She snorted and shook her head once.

Maybe one day she could lock Trex and Jacen in one room together for awhile - until they had a decent conversation and actually listened to the other. It'd probably get her kicked out of the Alliance. That prompted another snort. Throat cleared.

"Sorry. Not laughing at you. Just thinking about something."

The waiter came by. "Anything else for you two?"

Her eyes shifted to Trex, chestnut-brows raising. She certainly wouldn't deprive the hospital-bound teen something if he wanted it.

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

[member="Taheera Sollo"]

Trextan narrowed his eyes briefly after she snorted. He wasn't feeling robust at the moment and immediately assumed he was being mocked.

"Oh, okay," he replied to her comment. Maybe something else had caught her mind. He was quite open to anyone buying him food. The waiter arrived and he exchanged a glance with Taheera.

"Yes, I'd like to see what there is for dessert after please?" He asked. The waiter nodded and walked away.

Trextan turned back to the healer, deciding to take the focus away from himself just in case she had been laughing at him.

"So do you know the mirialan you were cloned from?"

 

[Taheera Sollo]

[member="Trextan Voidstalker"]

At least he'd have a taste for something besides the pudding, even though that was the best thing the hospital had to offer, in the healer's opinion. She nearly choked on a fry as he asked his next question. Hand pounded against her chest as her eyes immediately watered and sputtering coughs left her throat. A hand came up with one 'hold-on-a-sec' finger raised.

She didn't want him getting out of his seat to try the Heimlich on her, especially with him getting used to that arm.

A few mores sputtering coughs and some water later, she finally looked up, green palms pushing the water away from her eyes. "Whoo, sorrysorry. I'm okay. Just had a fry....yeah. Anyway."

Myrtle-ellipses flickered toward the interior of the restaurant, hoping the waiter would come back and make Trex forget all about his question. Sadly, the staff wasn't that prompt tonight.

Oh boy. Here we go.

"Welllllll," she began, trying to keep her voice from going into the highest range. "It's complicated."

Might as well just tell him. He didn't reject her for being a clone so maybe he wouldn't reject her for this? Then again...

"I kinda sorta wasn't in this body - when I was first created. It's...I....I was in a fight with a friend and we brought down a star destroyer with a band of pirates threatening to demolish a small village I'd been assigned to heal at. I kinda died but essence transferred into the woman that kinda sorta killed me."

The words just tumbled from her mouth and she couldn't stop them. She took a breath and this time looked very intently at her plate.

"A mirialan pirate queen."

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

[member="Taheera Sollo"]

"You brought down...A Star destroyer?" He asked, the teenager clearly in awe. He gave a quick shake of his head. "Sorry, that wasn't the point of that."

Trextan scratched at the side of his head. She seemed to have trouble talking about this. He worried that he shouldn't have pressed any further on the matter. It took him a moment to digest what she'd explained so far. Found mostly grown but missing knowledge, then shifted to another body.

"Right. So Tahira and Jegan were or are Jedi? You were a clone of her but that body got lost and now you're in this one? Alright, I think I've got it now." He was smiling as he took another sip of drink. "So what's it like moving? Is it awkward being in another body or does it pretty much feel the same?"

 

[Taheera Sollo]

[member="Trextan Voidstalker"]

Eyes widened. She stared at him. Trembling fingers tucked strands of chestnut hair behind her ears. Lips parted. They quickly closed in surprise. That was it? No sneer of disgust? No rejection about that darkside power?

She hadn't really had a choice but still.

Trex was a lot more easy going than she originally thought. He...surprised her. Hands came down to rest in her lap, fingers gripping each other beneath the table.

"Yeah," she finally said quietly. "You got it right. Don't tell anyone though. Okay? I'm not sure how other people would take it..." voice trailed off. She was worried about getting kicked out or branded as a monster.

His next question lessened the tension on her mouth. "It hurts like a fether. And yeah, it's weird. Disorienting. Scary."

She gulped.

She never wanted to experience it again. And if Val...someone...hadn't been there? She might've been undone.

"I died and stole someone's life without meaning to and woke up in her body with a bunch of...tattoos. I'm sorry I just....assumed you'd be disgusted. I mean. I'm glad you're not."

Duh.