Private Light Fingers

[Jacen Voidstalker]

"Like I said, most people spend their first lessons just trying to connect with the Force. I suppose you've had that forced upon you. You've had to use it to survive."

She was impatient. That was a problem. He knew it was a problem because he had once been thrown out of the Jedi academy for sparring with real lightsabers when he wasn't allowed to. He had been eighteen. He had been showing off. Someone had ended up in hospital and it was ten years before he had been accepted back into a jedi academy to finish his training.

In all conscience that was where he should have taken her next. There was danger from more than just her own attitude. He wanted to do this because he wanted to be important again.

"There'll be a cafe around here somewhere," he said, "you even drink caf?"

 

[Serya Talith]

She stood, rubbing at her face for a final time as she dismissed the rocks at her feet. "Sometimes, if I can..." Have access to it? She trailed off, uncomfortable. Neither party had drawn attention to how he had found her, he out of kindness and her out of embarrassment. She wrapped her arms around herself, a tinge of heat hitting her cheeks.

"This is weird, isn't it," she finally grumbled, wiping off her palms and gesturing towards a street. As it stood, she knew where one was. She knew the town pretty well.

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

"Yes. Yes it is," he agreed quietly.

Jacen didn't draw attention to her circumstances and how they had met more than necessary. He didn't want to draw the conversation towards the idea of him taking advantage of her. He also didn't really know how to feel about it all.

If she hadn't used the Force on him he wouldn't be here offering her another meal and hot drink. He felt guilty about that, even if he was glad he could at least recognise the hypocrisy. He couldn't fix everything in the Galaxy.

He had tried once. He had failed.

"I know you're not hungry but maybe try and eat something too?" he offered. He opened his mouth to try a joke, decided humour was not an ice breaker in this situation, and opened the door.

 

[Serya Talith]

There was comfort in his honesty.

She gave him a tight smile, the first of its kind, and offered him a hand up. "Sure. I'll eat." His stomach must be the size of a rancors. She kept this to herself, gesturing wordlessly for him to follow her. The silence between them built, the tension of their previous meeting replaced by awkward uncertainty and budding curiosity.

She looked over her shoulder at him, seeing the person behind the problem for the first time.

"...Where are you from, anyway?" She asked, the first friendly question extended. With six more months on the books together, that was... ok to ask, right?

They existed on eggshells.

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

It was a question. A perfectly suitable one. He was glad that she had asked it, because he had been truly unsure what he was supposed to talk about next.

He had done his warnings of the Dark side and imparted some advice. This was the point where the students were usually elsewhere. It was starting to sink in that he had put a serious responsibility upon himself

"Coruscant. Family is from Tatooine originally. They couldn't be more different. Heard of either?"

 

[Serya Talith]

She squinted, sorting through old memories and names that lingered without proper sorting. "I think so. Coruscant is like-- a really big city?" She had a faint memory of spiraling towers, blue sky, and her mothers face hovering over her.

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

"That's the one. It was taken by the One Sith years back and I was in exile for a long time."

There was much more to that story. Such as leaving his son behind, only to have him taken in by the sith to use as a weapon against him.

"Tatooine is a big old ball of sand. All desert with a few specks where humans cling on."

 

[Serya Talith]

She frowned, trying to place that into the timeline on when she had seen the place. It had been 6, 7 years tops? Did that constitute as a long time? She wondered briefly if they had been on that planet together at the same time, but it wasn't a question she pursued, his next comment distracting her.

"I hate sand," she asserted, stepping off the sidewalk and crossing the street. She didn't even look both ways, bold and careless about the traffic that might pass. The world moved for her, or she made it. And that was that.

"I hate heat. No wonder why you left." Of course it wasn't as simple as that, but she made it so.

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

"My family left it years ago, before I was born. But I've spend the last few years there with family. Seemed best for everyone to just get away from the bright centre of the galaxy."

He very nearly chastised her for not looking down the street. He wasn't here to treat her like a child, he reminded himself. At least as little as possible. She must have learned to sense danger a long time ago, probably long before she even knew she could do things with the Force.

"That the place?" he asked, seeing a glass fronted shop on the road.

 

[Serya Talith]

Her lips purse, her expression pinching ever so slightly as she shook her head. She didn't explain as she lead him past the glass front of what was clearly a coffee shop, but from the sudden tensing of her muscles it was clear she was uncomfortable.

"The core's nothing but trouble," she uttered, the words better suiting a jaded adult than a teen. She turned the corner, intending to lead him out of the well to do streets and deeper into an alleyway system.

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

Not that one then...

Jacen looked back over his shoulder as they continued. He could feel the discomfort emanating off of her. The obvious guess was she had been thrown out from there, or caught stealing.

"You've been to the core?" he asked.

 

[Serya Talith]

After a moment, she nodded, telling him more about herself in that moment than she had to anyone since Mathew.

“I use to go to a lot of places. ... but here’s not so bad. I guess. There’s no sand.” It was cryptic. She didn’t mean to be, she just wasn’t use to talking. Somethings she couldn’t help but to hold close to her chest.”

The small bit of wealth faded away, the grimy alleyway opening to another street, a touch more run down than the one before. Another coffee shop laid before then. She walked towards this one now, biting her lip.

“Do you have a ship?”

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

"I do have a ship, but I warn you now that I am not a brilliant pilot. Safe just that landings are never quite smooth."

Jacen tucked that bit of knowledge away. There has been a life before the streets. There were a lot of possibilities. No good reasons that people ended up homeless on the streets.

" Anywhere else in the core you've been?" he asked as they approached the door. He didn't dig into the heart of his curiosity, but chipped around the edges.

 

[Serya Talith]

A small smile touched her lips, life entering her voice. "Oh all over the place. Tython and Vulpter and Alderaan. I saw the wookies once. ...Actually wait they're not in the core..." She slipped into the cafe letting her hair fall in front of her face as she went for the corner.

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

Jacen offered a smile to the woman cleaning mugs at the cafe bar. They didn't pay much attention to him at all.

"So you used to travel a lot?" he asked. It wasn't the same as asking exactly how she had ended up here, but it was definitely a more prying question than anything that had come before.

 

[Serya Talith]

"Yeah," she confirmed, her voice clipped and soft as she melted into the seat. Exhaustion clung at the edge of her body, like a toxin weighing her down. She rubbed at her face, trying to banish it to the nethers as she let him look at the menu. She'd have what he was having. It was pattern turning trend.

Her thoughts fell back to the time before this all-- to the flights, to the dinners, to the first steps onto new planets. Her mother's face drawled softly through the edges of her mind. Her eyes flickered closed.

She took a deep breath.

And propelled it all away.

"What are you getting?" She asked back, golden eyes opening back on him.

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

That was definitely all he was going to get out of her on the subject. At least it was all she was going to offer up now. His life might have left him with regrets and more scars than he could count, but he also had an abundance of patience.

He didn't always have the sensibility to go with it, but he had patience now.

"I'm going to get a caf and a slice of cake. You should have a fruit juice as well as whatever you want," he said. "Get some sugar back in you."

That was his fault. He had let her push herself too far. It still didn't sit right, how suddenly that had come on.

"That hasn't ever happened to you before?"

 

[Serya Talith]

She plucked at the string of a hole on her sleeve, biting her lip in appreciation as he let the subject change.

"What? Faint? Well yeah. Every now and then. ... Oh come on, don't tell me that's not normal too," she near whined, the teen about done having her world plucked apart like the strings of her sleeve.

"Everyone faints," she protested, her palms going on the table. "Don't tell me you haven't." As it turned out there was a line of abnormal she could stand, and today they were about to reach it.

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

"I think I pushed you too hard. Well, actually I think you pushed you too hard, but I didn't help. Just...little steps at a time from now on."

It wasn't entirely the truth, but it was not a lie. He didn't want to worry her any further and it genuinely could have simply been her pushing beyond her limits.

"Do you want to borrow my datapad to order yourself some new clothes?" he offered. He didn't want to admit that he was still slightly nervous that if he handed over some credit chits that she would take them and vanish.

 

[Serya Talith]

Her eyes flickered up, taking in his nervous hue and discounting it as nothing more than him uncomfortable with the stigma of what it meant to take a girl off the streets.

She felt it too. It did make growing comfortable with each other a little slower. She took a deep breath in, trying to shove it all aside.

"Okay," she agreed, her pride showing up in the red hue of her cheeks. In all the awkwardness of the moment, she did not say more.

She picked at her cuticles and stared at the table. One might say a street rat wasn't good at conversation. Perhaps that would change in time.