Private Something In The Way

[Ishida Ashina]

Ah, so it wasn't a kink. It was a ceremonial honour, or a sort of responsibility to respect an heirloom. Despite herself, she smiled again.

"That's nice." She offered before transitioning to an observation. "You come from a family of Jedi."

But if he had the lightsaber in his possession, that meant, by nature of an heirloom the original owners were likely no longer alive.

Her smile wilted, and turned into something more solemn. To break eye contact, she looked down at the cylindrical grip in Bernard 's gloved hands. It still seemed to be leaving tiny breaths of chill against the leather and she let herself consider that for a second before she said what she wanted to say. Well, she wanted to say many things –– ask about his father. Ask about his brother. But at the same time, she didn't want that level of intimacy. That would require them to be...friends. Perhaps.

She cleared her throat.

"Have you been home since you lost your connection to The Force?"

 

[Bernard]

A family of Jedi was an understatement. Growing up most anyone he knew had been a part of the Order. Only on the rarest days did he met anyone who wasn't affiliated with them while out accompanying the older Jedi on a routine patrol, and usually the people they encountered then stood on the wrong end of a lightsabre.

Ishida's noise brought him back to the present, and he looked up from the hilt.

"I haven't. The last time I was on Arkania an emergency conference had been called about imperials encroaching on Ilum. Didn't have the time to visit home then, and with all that needs to be done and the way the galaxy's been ... we'll see," he replied.

A half-truth. He had the time to go, but he'd chosen overtime at the Marshal's office to avoid making any trips. Not like much was waiting on him there.

His grip on the hilt tightened, leather creaking quietly.

"Maybe sometime soon, that might be nice," a smile flashed over his face, swallowing down the memories at the edges of his thoughts.

Ishida Ashina

 

[Ishida Ashina]

"Maybe sometime sooner?" Ishida suggested, nosing her way into his business. Her prompt was followed by a shrug and an explanation, down playing any festering curiosities. To demonstrate further her façade of how little she actually cared, she drew a semi-circle with the toe of her foot around her position and tapped her heel against the ground.

"Who knows, maybe there's something in your family's history, or just being back somewhere full of heirlooms and training and memories that'll help you reconnect."

When she wasn't fighting, throwing herself into attacks, she realized how difficult it was to connect with someone on an interpersonal level. It was one thing to square him up as an opponent, but standing around, swapping stories, chatting about family heirlooms and creations felt...weird. Foreign, even.

Against all her willpower, she tried to tap into the distant, buried instructions from her mother on hospitality. She'd always been such a polite, demure, well-liked woman. Everyone in their estate and village adored Lady Ashina. The only person who had anything bad to say about her was Ishida's father, and he used words like weak and distracting.

Sucking in a breath, she bit down on her lip and kept her eyes trained on the invisible crescent she'd drawn between them.

Okay, she'd try to put into use some of the kindness her mother had hoped Ishida would employ, if it hadn't been trained out of her. There were small glimpses of it within still. Being around someone like Auteme helped them flare up now and again.

After a bit of uncomfortable silence, maybe about five seconds, she ventured into her original wondering about the heirloom.

"Your brother and father won't be there when you go back, will they? That's how you got that sabre, isn't it."

Those weren't quite the welcoming questions Lady Ashina might have asked but..they were something that helped show her interest.

 

[Bernard]

His smile faded slightly.

The idea of going home sooner didn't even make it past his thoughts. Going back to Arkania, back home to the temple, seemed impossible. Not because of any physical or logistical barriers. He still remembered how to find it, and getting there was no issue. The difficulty arose from a different matter.

The memories were the problem.

Bernard had never known much fear on the battlefield. Even against overwhelming odds, he'd always managed to remain focused on the mission. Certainty in his abilities and tactical acumen allowed him that freedom from fear. Of course, he experienced the occasional moments of doubt or nervousness, though more often than not those worries were directed outward, to a team member or familiar face. Fear was not something he felt much, nor did he dwell on it.

But when thoughts of those bronze halls surfaced it all came flooding in. Suddenly the world became a dangerous place, full of threats and monsters to be feared. His usual resolve broke down and crumbled to dust, blown away by cold winds. Time stopped existing, every passing moment felt both like an eternity and nothing at all. Suddenly, he became aware of a mortal's fragility, too aware, and it scared him. It scared him so much.

His fingers wrapped even more tightly around the hilt, the leather stretching audibly. The glove's rigid material began pushing into the skin of his hand and he could feel the blood pulsing with each heartbeat, even through the numbing cold. His eyes were locked on an arbitrary point on the ground, off past Ishida's side.

"They won't be," his voice sounded empty, drifting off.

A moment passed, and he blinked his eyes shut, shaking something away. He turned back to Ishida, forcing a slight smile that might look convincing enough, he thought.

"Probably. I got it from my father last time I was home. My brother he, uh, decided being a Jedi wasn't for him, he didn't want to keep the blade if he wouldn't use it."

Ishida Ashina

 

[Ishida Ashina]

So, not dead. Or if they were, he spoke of them as if they were still alive.

Strangely, she could empathize.

And in empathy, she watched Bernard 's reaction. For all her silence, observing human body language had been a primary means of communication for her for a long while. Comprehension before communication. He seemed tense, cold, distant, and apprehensive. Haunted, almost. She wanted to ask if he was alright, and then he suddenly blinked back into the white training room across from her, re-inhabiting his body.

"He...left the Jedi? Where is he now?"

 

[Bernard]

Her prying put him more on the defensive than he anticipated. The facade he was trying to muster wouldn't survive more extensive questioning. The memories that had been dredged up from the moment he'd entered the arena had already been a lot to handle. Now that even more of his past clawed its way into his psyche he felt his strength falter further. A sudden sense of unease coursed through him and he involuntarily leaned a few millimeters away from Ishida.

"I don't know. I never heard from him after he left. He and my father had a ... falling out, let's say," he shifted on his feet, glancing over his shoulder to the exit. "Look, I forgot I still have some Marshal work to take care of. How about we continue this conversation another time? Another test of blades maybe or some other occasion? I'm fine for anything." he spoke a little faster than before, rubbing the back of his neck.

He hated proposing to end their talk so suddenly. He enjoyed the opportunity to talk more openly with another Jedi, especially someone he was warming to, a rare event for the Arkanian, but the sheer amount of emotion that hammered against the levee barely holding together his exterior cohesion was starting to get overwhelming. He wasn't sure what would happen to him once it overflowed. Glimpses of Ragoon came. The sight of his hands as he knelt before the pyre, and the helplessness he felt there. Then, Atrisia, when the spice in the atmosphere had settled into his system and caused him to shut down as the memories came rushing in.

The only clear thought he could still muster at that moment was that he didn't want to be around anyone when the levee broke. Not this time. He'd figure it out on his own, he always had.

"I'll see you around, huh?" He said, already taking a step back, half-turning towards the doorway.

Ishida Ashina

 

[Ishida Ashina]

He and my father had a ... falling out, let's say,"

A knowing smile flashed across her lip line, prompted by the parallels in her own family's relationships. Boy, did she know about fathers and sons and the chasms between. Inosuke Ashina had been exiled by their father, rupturing the Ashina bloodline into a state of dissonance. It had happened before she'd been born –– at least Bernard had a relationship with his brother prior to the disagreement. To this day, the Jedi Knight had yet to be redeemed or welcomed home. They'd never been a true family within The Ashina Estate.

"Heh, I kn––" She opened her mouth to speak, feeling at ease enough to volunteer that likeness they shared, but clicked her teeth shut when he sought to evade the topic further.

Or this interaction entirely.

A rolling sense of unease travelled through her, tightening the base of her throat and filling her head with a flutter of uncertainty. Up to now, she thought this had been going quite well, this attempt at friendliness. She'd pushed her social boundaries, asked questions, been genuinely interested, and even laughed just a bit.

All that progress yanked away by an excuse about procrastination. Or convenient memory loss. His posture changed, tightening defensively as if he were protecting something within that he didn't want to escape. Typical nervous ticks manifested and she remained silent, forever trapping her friendly admission behind her teeth.

Ishida didn't believe him, and she expressed her distrust in the way her smirk settled into something more akin to a frown.

"Yeah.." She started, folding her arms across her chest. Her scrutinizing gaze was as natural as a resting schutta face. All that progress hung in the space between them.

It bothered her how quickly she felt deflated in reaction to his sudden want to exit. It was strange, like he wanted to leave but still offered the chance to continue –– even in the way he lingered, giving her the opportunity to continue the conversation.

The only other possible explanation was that he was telling the truth. Despite his body language.

"Okay." She shrugged, feigning a lackadaisical coolness through her tone that she didn't really feel. "I've got to get some reading done too. I'll walk out with you, anyway."

That unspoken attempt at building another bridge wrestled along her tongue and smashed through her tight-lipped listlessness. "I was going to say.." she started, but kept her arms folded while walking in the direction of the exit. Like a half-hug to herself to reassure that this was worth continuing. "That I know what the father and brother schism is like. Rough, unnatural. And finds a way to just...disrupt everything.

It's always struck me as strange, you'd think the head of a household would want to protect harmony. Not rupture it."

 

[Bernard]

The here and now became a blur barely registering. Hazy outlines and foggy colours made up the room. Ishida seemed distant. Standing right in front of him, but simultaneously not. As though her presence had been replaced with an image that bore her resemblance. The entire room seemed strangely absent, still existing in an abstract, conceptual way, but having lost all that gave it substance and weight.

Bernard barely felt his body, his movements disconnected from the thoughts that rolled off his mind. He turned fully towards the exit, but his mind reeled after his body as though it was an afterimage of his physical presence. The steps they took together towards that exit seemed almost robotic to him. Detached observation of his movements fueled that awareness of disconnection. It sent a shiver of panic down his spine.

Ishida began to speak again. Her words echoed through a series of caves and tunnels before they reached his mind and then took moments more to be understood. Any awareness of connections built or broken had long flown out the window, replaced by efforts to regain a semblance of the link between body and mind. He grasped at the last strands that still attached the two, pulling at them desperately to bring harmony back into being. All his efforts managed were more moments clinging to the edge of the ledge.

What had she said? Brothers and fathers, right. All his efforts switched to pay attention to the scraps of reason that still hadn't fully slipped from his grasp.

"A family connection doesn't protect us from," he paused searching for a single word in a flood of sentences tangled in a mess of confusion, "from malice burning away the threads that bind. Those bonds are as fragile as any other."

He remembered what they had been doing. Talking, reminiscing, exchanging thoughts, ideas, and experiences. Building a figurative bridge.

The desire to build up his side of the bridge, to hold onto a semblance of connection, was cast out as an anchor. The storm that raged didn't fade, but he'd found refuge on a small rock out by its lonesome surrounded by vast, raging seas.

His movements carried him towards the exit, but the ground they tread on came up to meet him again, granting a solid footing. At least until they parted ways and he could find refuge somewhere on his own.

Ishida Ashina

 

[Ishida Ashina]

The answer he gave was as unexpected as it was distant.

Colloquialism was squashed with his response, and she almost stopped in her tracks. It sounded like something Master Sardun would say.

It moved her to look back at him, puzzled.

“Are you okay?”

Her social alarms flared, and her cheeks flushed involuntarily. That melancholic sting she’d felt in front of Knight Lashiec trilled through her memory. How few connections she had, how little friends she managed to maintain. She’d never really tried to establish companions, but maybe now and here she was forcing it too much, holding the steel to the fire far too long.

Where had she gone wrong? At which point did they traipse into this territory that felt so uncomfortable? Everything in her body tightened, begging her muscles to move away and fast –– she fought it. Wrestled with that foreign feeling of uncertainty.

Pride prevented her from asking what it was she had done to invoke this reaction.

Maybe she’d applied too much pressure, too much heat. The steel being forged was unused to the process, as was the craftswoman. The more she pressed, the further she impaired the process and threatened the fragility of bonds.

Bonds. Her father had been terrible at them but her mother –– her mother’s graciousness was well known and revered through their village.

Lady Ashina used to sit with her friends, asking how they were over tea. Sharing stories that brought tears of laughter and pain, respectfully. Those conversations seemed to go on for hours whenever the child's memory of Ishida witnessed them. Two silhouettes sharing precious minutes together, building, bonding. Ishida remembered how those ghosts of her mind moved, sipping carefully, crossing their ankles, leaning toward one another with interest. Her mom would touch her friends with her eyes, heart, and eventually her hands. Usually on the nook of their arm while they gushed out their truth. Ishida’d never really cared what they were saying, but recognized the subtle unfolding of sunken shoulders into something stronger by the end of the exchange.

The same kind of scrunched shoulders Bernard had now. How would her mother have unknit them? Made her friend feel better?

To complement her ask, she slowed her pace and touched the bend of his arm, brushing against his elbow as if the outreach might centre him. Unlike her mother though, she didn’t linger. Didn’t let her care last longer than a second. In that brief instant it felt too forced, and she pulled back quickly, awkwardly clenching her fist and dropping it back from her side. Folding back together to the safety of self.

“You don’t have to answer that.” Ishida interrupted, gesturing loosely with her free hand.

In an act of self preservation, the warrior’s expression darkened again, frosty, stormy and clouding out the tenderness that had previously intrigued her. It felt too surreal, bouncing between the violent approach from her father during their duel and the benevolence of her mother in the conversation following. She was lost somewhere between and it was just...damaging and making her feel more and more awkward. As if the skin she donned was tightening and would soon no longer fit.