Private The Ghost of a Home

[Cale Gunderson]

This had been his favorite place in the temple once, a little alcove on the upper floors that had likely been built as some sort of meditation chamber but that he'd repurposed as his own little space. Through the years he'd often thought about it, of how the light of the Coruscant sunset would cut through the city haze when it hit the window. It'd taken him a long time to work up the courage to go and find it, but today had been the day. Cale had limped up flight after flight of stairs, worked his way through the halls, and finally found it.

Or where it should've been. Absently, Cale placed his hand on the cool surface of the wall the stood in the place of his once-private sanctuary. Of course it wouldn't have still been there. The temple had fallen from the Jedi's grasp for a decade, then it'd been burned again a decade after that. Cale knew that, he knew that better than anyone. The One Sith had made the corpse of a temple his station while he was in their thrall, he'd known the extent of the damage, and yet still he'd hoped. But there was nothing there, not anymore.

All three of the Jedi Temples had their drawbacks, but Coruscant was the worst and the best of them all at once. Illum was frigid, Tython was too familiar, and Coruscant was complicated. But it was the only one of the three where he didn't catch as many stares when he lit a stim between his lips, and the only one where he was sure to find something to keep him busy.

His hand fell away from the wall, and he scrunched his face up in frustration only to instantly regret it as pain shot out like a knife. A thick bandage sat over the bridge of his nose, but even with all the work medics and healers it was still going to heal crooked. Cale hurt all over if he was being honest with himself, but he swallowed the little bit agony in silence as he turned around on his good leg, and wondered if he could even find his way back in this new temple.

Oriadne Hallas

 

[Oriadne Hallas]

Oriadne didn’t have a favourite place in the temple. This wasn’t even ‘her’ temple, not the one she had been raised in, but there were memories associated with the general location, on which one model of the Jedi Temple or another had stood more or less consistently for tens of thousands of years. Even further, it was hard to say that this was ‘her’ Coruscant; she would be thoroughly impressed if any one of the locales that she knew of had survived.

From what she gathered of the history between the Clone Wars and now, on which she had barely even scratched the surface, she doubted very much there was anything left, but there was one thing for certain: it still felt like Coruscant. It was still the same planet-wide city. But it wasn’t home, in the sense that it wasn’t where she and Aron had chosen to raise their family. It wasn’t home in the sense that it wasn’t where Oriadne was born. It wasn’t home, in the sense that this wasn’t her time --- well, there was no choice. It had to be her time, now.

She didn’t have a favourite place in the temple, because it could also be said that she’d only just set foot in it for the first time. Well, a handful of hours ago. Who knew there was so much paperwork transferring in from the Jedi Order of a different era? Despite actually coming all the way here, Oriadne been half-tempted to just stick with her ship what with how transient she had been for much of her life by virtue of her calling, but after a few years nigh-constantly spent on ships and jumping into warzones, followed by centuries in stasis, then the brunt of a year sleeping in an actual bed, followed by jumping into yet another warzone, she had to say she preferred the bed.

So when procurement had offered her quarters within the temple, Oriadne decided to take them up on it at least for now, and once she had dropped off her few belongings into the room… she had turned right around and went to poke around in the rest of the temple. Case the joint, as it were. Forgo the datapad map of the temple layout, which she’d looked at all of once, and maybe get lost. That was part of how they’d come to remember which way was up in the sprawling temple complex when she was an initiate, wasn’t it?

“The vantage point was certainly different, back then. Happens when you’re under a metre tall,” she mused quietly, peering up a stairwell, then looking back over her shoulder, before looking up the stairs again, “And these stairs aren’t in the same spot as before.”

She began climbing, not being in any rush, “Residential wing was in a completely different location, too,” and took the rest of the stairs in silence. Eventually she was met with a choice to take one corridor or another, and she went right. She had been surprised to find that, centuries on, the Jedi had been irreparably fractured into disparate groups, and the temple housed nowhere near the numbers it was capable of, which meant that there were parts of the temple that just weren’t occupied by anything or anyone. That was the strangest part of it all. Used to be, there was someone or something no matter where you went. Here, in these halls, there was a silence that seemed out of place on Coruscant.

“Why climb all those stairs when you don’t need to, I suppose,” soft words punctuated with a one-note laugh at herself, as she traversed the corridors, peeked into empty rooms, and came to another intersection. It was then that she got the telltale feeling that she wasn’t alone up here. And no, it wasn’t the birds nesting on the spires, away from the air traffic. Oriadne looked left, then right, and after another moment or two, went left. Subsequent corridors were taken on the basis of whatever brought her closer to that presence. Maybe she’d been expecting to be the only one on this seemingly pointless trek.

Cale Gunderson​

 

[Cale Gunderson]

He'd taken some solace that he'd been largely alone when he'd walked himself to a dead end, there were no younglings or Padawans about to question what he was doing, or why he was there. But the peace that came with solitude was short-lived, as he should've anticipated if he were being honest. Cale felt the presence long before he heard the footfalls against the tiled floor. His hand dug into a pocket, and pressed a stimstick between his lips, but fell short of lighting the thing.

Instead he'd just let it hang there between his lips as he turned towards the ever-closer sound of footsteps.

For a moment he held out hope that the presence might've been familiar, some long-lost friend come back from beyond the veil, but it felt as much a stranger as everyone else in the temple. The Nobles, Kaze, Westegard, and the librarian might've been the only Jedi living that he actually knew in some remote way. The fault there was his own, his distance from the order had been a conscious choice.

It didn't take long until he saw her passing through the nearest corridor, and the one-armed Jedi found himself alone with an utter stranger. Once he'd have been eager to meet someone new, then in a different life he'd have been as bitter as he could to get away from the awkwardness of the encounter. Cale was at a loss for what he was supposed to do now.

"Not a lot up here these days." He remarked absently, giving a half-shrug. "Guess I should've trusted the map."

Cale would've bet Ronan fifty credits the woman was going to say something about smoking in temples, but Ronan was gone off to chase ghosts, and he was here alone with a stranger. It could've been worse though, he was sure.

Oriadne Hallas ​

 

[Oriadne Hallas]

Somehow, she’d just blustered right by him. Somehow, she’d transitioned from poking around out of curiosity to being a woman on a mission… to what end? Oriadne came to a stop after another few steps when he quipped about the map and paused, at which point her head fell back and a partly self-deprecating laugh pealed out of her.

“I could’ve guessed,” she replied dryly. One hand hooked onto her hip, and her head dropped while the other splayed over her forehead and eyes as her head shook. Only after a moment of this did she turn, dropping the hand from her face to rest on her other hip; lifting her gaze, she got a good look at the guy, stim, bandage, and looking a bit rough in general to the point of being one arm short.

The collective details told one story or another that she’d come to know the beats of over the brunt of a couple centuries. One corner of her lips curled upward.

“If you’re gonna smoke the place out, I’d suggest something a little greener and perception-altering,” she quipped, tipping her chin at the stim, “that a legal stick?”

That was another thing she was going to have to brush up on - the law. She couldn’t assume things remained the same, but with this outfit, it was a pretty safe assumption. She hoped.

Cale Gunderson​

 

[Cale Gunderson]

"Whatcha' planning to do if it isn't?" Cale's question had a bite to it, but one he softened with a half-smile after it. He gave her a once-over, and concluded beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had in fact never met this woman in his life. He would have remembered her, of that he was sure. She carried herself in a way that told a story though, one that he thought he might've known how to read.

Not a consular, probably not a guardian, and that only left a few options and a few kinds of people. His kind, or what would've been once upon a time. He lacked the tact for that sort of thing these days.

"Cale," He introduced himself, offering out an open hand. "I've been uh, away, for a while, sorry if I should know who you are."

This wasn't going to be the last time he had a conversation like this, of that he was sure. It'd been easier when he could stop by to check in and leave before anyone asked him any serious questions, but now that he was here to stay, he had decades of catching up to do and faces to learn. With any luck this would be a good start.

He'd never been that lucky though.

Oriadne Hallas ​

 

[Oriadne Hallas]

“Lucky for you, I left my cuffs with my other belt,” she shot back, deadpan - her other belt, once upon a time - but one corner of her mouth pulled up; this kind of banter was familiar, even if nothing else and no-one else in this place really was, yet. Names and faces to which she had only just been introduced while plummeting into the last hellscape of a now-ended war weren’t what she could call familiar.

“Oriadne,” she replied in kind, grasping his hand with her own, “Same… or I could just say I’m new here, but that’s not quite right?”

She couldn’t say she’d known most of the Jedi in the temple that well, if at all, back in her day, and had only just met some of them in the theatre of the Outer Rim, scant months before their demise. Her situation now was quite possibly worse - or better, if she had any inclination to be a hermit - with every face she encountered virtually everywhere being a new one, but living as long as she had necessitated forming new connections every so many years. She had that experience going for her, at least.

Oriadne released his hand. “I can count on one hand the people that should know me,” Ori admitted - and none of those knowings were older than a year, “everyone else is gone.”

Cale Gunderson​

 

[Cale Gunderson]

Cale let out a stifled laugh, and shook his head, an itch at the back of his mind reminding him that he’d yet to light the stim but he pushed it away. It could wait until the conversation was over he told himself, he could manage that much.

“Yeah, I uh, think I’m in the same situation these days.” Cale still looked for them in the unfamiliar halls, hoping that a familiar face might meander out from one of the meditation chambers or a training room, but every time it was just another stranger. Everyone really was just gone. He liked to think some of them had found peaceful lives out there in the stars, but he knew that was naive. Terribly so.

“When are you from, Orianne?” It was a shot in the dark guess, but Cale knew too many people who’d come out of the cold grasp of stasis and awakened in a galaxy that they scarcely recognized. She fit the bill, and the final bitter remark all but solidified his assumption.

Oriadne Hallas

 

[Oriadne Hallas]

Oriadne tended not to let on about the when, avoiding the subject beyond where it was necessary. It had become the easier decision to leave the past where it belonged. To be able to cope and move on. One foot in front of the other.

“Are you that observant all the time, or…?” She took a deep breath that came out as a heavy, nasal sigh, followed by a couple notes of an awkward laugh; it still wasn’t the easiest subject, that can of worms, “Morellian, vintage is–” The old dating system was on the tip of her tongue, but she remembered the calculation for the current one. Even that had been painful to account for early on, another step forward into this reality, while she had still been mired deep in the stage of denial, “--220 BBY. I was raised–” she flicked a glance toward the ceiling, “--in a different temple that used to stand here.”

Well, that summed better than she expected.

“I entered the hibernation trance in the days following the murder of my entire Order in–” it felt too sanitised to call it the ‘Purge’, “--19 BBY, on a planet that I’m not sure if it even has a name, deep in what the first people I encountered after awakening called the Shiraya Expanse.”

It wasn’t on any common map, so she’d come to learn, and the treacherous paths of navigating in and out of it meant she had unexpectedly hidden a little too well.

“How about you? Where are you from, Cale?”

Cale Gunderson ​

 

[Cale Gunderson]

"No, not always." In truth, Cale only picked up on it because of just how many others he'd stumbled into over the years who'd come from an era before their own, before the Gulag Plague and the Four Hundred Year darkness. It also didn't hurt that he'd had his own, a significantly shorter stint in suspended animation. He'd never be as out of place as she was, but he knew enough to pick up on the signs.

Her story was a tragic one to be sure, but maybe there was some comfort in going to sleep in a world where the order had been nearly extinguished only to wake up in one where it was thriving. He doubted it though, whatever benefits there might've been was almost certainly outweighed but all she must've lost.

"Technically I'm from here. Was born on a sublevel a few hundred down, the story's a long one from there, but this isn't the temple I knew either." He'd almost need both his hands to count the number of times the temple had been sacked in his lifetime, but he'd only witnessed one. For a long time, he'd witnessed it again whenever he dared to close his eyes, but slowly he'd begun to find some semblance of peace.

"Looks like we're both strangers here." He offered her a half-smile and a sigh. It was never going to get easier, not this part.

Oriadne Hallas ​

 

[Oriadne Hallas]

That this wasn’t the same temple for him as well was a thing Oriadne tucked into the back of her mind. That - as far as she could measure - was some more recent history; she’d only filled herself in on just enough information to understand the conflict she’d aided nailing shut, and been implored to seek out by the Force itself, in advance of her arrival at the theatre.

She had distanced herself from ingesting much at all about the past, early on, largely out of not being ready, and left it to calcify into ambivalence. She had logically known they were gone, and slowly she had been able to wholly accept it as fact, even if the pain still snuck up on her from time to time.

That she had been informed in the early months of the survival of her ilk had been some small comfort, making it less of a fraught process to move forward and a bit easier to focus on regaining her strength after the long hibernation. The second of her newer acquaintances had greatly aided in that process.

“Strangers in strange corridors,” she breathed with her own sigh, as if to agree, punctuating it with a firm smile - then, “Well, seeing as I’m going to be here for… a while,” an indeterminate while, “best to make it as 'like home' as possible and find where the good drinks are.”

Her brows lifted just a little. She had made her first true acquaintance in this era - a shinobi - over some Atrisian sake, some eight to nine months ago.

“Jedi do drink here, right?”

Not that it was verboten in her time, but many Jedi didn’t imbibe from what she had been able to gather, for various reasons, and excess was frowned upon. For her, it had started as part and parcel to her calling - its value as a social lubricant and in undercover work could not be overstated by her masters - and came to be personally enjoyed with time. With the training to negate it, if necessary.

Cale Gunderson​