Tara Renathi: Pride and Passion

In Character Roleplay
#1

Tara sat on her bed looking blankly over the information on the Agricultural Corps. It was a lot of data about growth and harvest goals, challenges of working in damaged ecosystems, and lists of different equipment and resources used by the corps.

However, she barely acknowledged it. She mostly just stared at it blankly, seeing little more than the pictures as she lazily scrolled through it. She still could not get the trial out of her mind. Even despite all her preparation, despite all the people that had spoken up for her, she was still being taken away from her master yet again. They tried to say you shouldn’t look at the reassignment to the corps as a failure, but how could she not? If it was not supposed to be a negative thing, then why consider it a disciplinary measure? She had tried to look at it how they wanted her to, the way they told her she was supposed to see it, but the more she listened to them talk about it, the more it just seemed like hollow words.

If she had been what they termed as a proper jedi, then they never would have sent her there, so that means she was not what they wanted in a Jedi. It was the true copout, meant to either soften the blow of being set back yet again in her training, or a pointless platitude used to shut her up so she was not allowed to feel bad about how things turned out, and in turn easing their own consciences.

So many things had been said to her during that trial, and so much of it felt hollow and absurd. She couldn’t figure out which part was worse, Vrake’s ridicule of her at the end for trying to be respectful and accepting her fate, or the fact that P’uru had flat out lied about several things that happened. Not just a fellow jedi, but someone she had thought could be her friend. It had to be the latter, definitely. Vrake will be Vrake, but nothing hurts like the betrayal of a “friend.” But at least now she knew what a manipulative petty person she was, and she would never make the mistake of trusting her again. At least she would not have to deal with her or Corbin in the corps. That was the one silver lining of all this. Perhaps now she could find some semblance of peace.

Tara let out a heavy sigh and turned to hop out of the bed. It was the only piece of furniture she had in the makeshift warehouse, but she didn’t really feel like running into anybody at the dorm before she left, so she chose to make her preparations here. She just wanted to make ready and head out with as little fuss as possible.

She found her packed bag in the front room, and shouldered it. She didn’t have much to take with her, and didn’t really need much. Such was the way of the jedi. Nothing to bring along but the practical necessities.

Tara went to open the front door to leave. She had chosen to join the AgriCorps, and it seemed like a good enough decision. She would be able to get plenty of practice with plant surge that Callista had taught her, and…

Tara stopped short as she exited the apartment, whatever she had been thinking about was gone from her mind as she looked to the figure standing before her.

Clad in a well-kept jedi tunic, beard gone and clean shaven, with sandy brown hair, a pair of kind green sympathetic eyes, peaceful as the old Telosian fields looked back at her. Tara’s breath caught in her throat. A familiar smile regarded her as she stammered.

“Gan…?” she finally managed.

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[Game of 20 Questions] Tara Renathi
#2

“Tara,” he greeted.

She gave him an incredulous look. He sure picked a hell of a time to show up, with everything that’s been going on. He seemed like he was a bit better off than when she left him in the cave at least. The whole “not a hobo” look was working for him. At least he could clean up well. “You’ve got some weird timing.”

“Seemed like you could use a friend.”

Tara considered him for a few moments. “Word got around quick,” she replied as she eyed him suspiciously.

Gan gave a little shrug. “It’s a small colony.”

“And what, you thought you’d just come swooping in like some white knight and save me from it all again?” she bit back at him.

Why is he so frustrating?! What the hell does he expect from me? Why show up NOW of all times?

“What’s next, you’re going to drag me back to your cave again and lock me up until Vrake pulls his head out of his ass?”

“Come on, Tara, don’t be like that,” he replied, seeming a bit exasperated.

“Or what, did you just pop by to say ‘I told you so’ before I went off to the force knows where?”

Tara had to stop after that. Even she could tell she was getting worked up for no reason. He had come by to offer his support it seemed, and he didn’t deserve all this.

“It’s not like that, Tara,” he insisted.

Mood Music: Across the Stars

She let out a heavy sigh as she tried to pull her emotions under control. She was normally more composed than this, but it seemed like seeing him again was bringing up old wounds. Wounds she should be over. “I’m sorry, Gan…You didn’t deserve that.”

“It’s okay,” he said gently. “You’ve been under a lot of stress, I get it.”

“No it’s not alright.” She sighed, shaking her head, then looked to him again. “Do you…want to come inside and talk?”

He gave a little nod. “Sure.”

Tara took Gan back inside her apartment warehouse and he gave a low whistle. “So this is what big city living is like.”

Tara rolled her eyes but gave a little smirk. “This is just an improvised warehouse I’ve been using for special project materials.” She motioned around to the plain room with only containers and crates situated in an organized fashion. “Sorry there’s not anywhere good to sit.”

“I can make do,” he said as he made his way over to one of the crates and sat down.

“I suppose you can. It’s better than sitting on awkward rocks at least.”

“That it is.” He looked to Tara a minute as she came over and joined him atop an adjacent crate. “So tell me…what’s all this business with the Service Corps? What happened?”

Tara spent the next couple hours telling Gan everything that she had been dealing with lately. Her previous expulsion and eventual return to the order, her past troubles with Corbin, her history with P’uru and the issues surrounding her return to Viscara, the trouble with Alice and Echo, Shade coming back, the demise of Acaadi, her recent efforts to let go of attachments and past hurt, and finally the recent trial. It all came pouring out, and as Tara went through each item in methodical detail, she occasionally had to pause and re-center.

She didn’t even consider that she shouldn’t be telling him. This was all considered internal jedi matters, and it had been years since he had been part of the order, but like Zvadras, she knew where he stood and knew he would respect her and be discrete. Whatever other problems she had ever had with him, she at least knew that.

Gan just sat listening, taking in the whole tale quietly and calmly, save for when she got to the end at the talk of the council’s trial. Following that, he sat for a bit longer, mulling over it all and Tara watched him, waiting for the reaction she knew was coming.

Finally, he shook his head and spoke up. “I admit, I knew some of this already…but I hadn’t heard everything. But do you see now? The council, the order, the masters…they’re not what you thought they were. Master Karnz was a great jedi, but even he set you up for failure…he only taught you what the jedi should be, he never taught you what it actually is. And so you were never prepared to deal with it like this.”

Tara considered quietly, frowning at his mention of her old master.

“How many times have they done this to you, Tara? It wasn’t enough you lost your arm for the sake of the order and almost died how many times? They constantly beat you down and then try and act like you’re such a problem that they need to send you off to the corps not once but two times when you’ve obviously come so far…”

“But I have made mistakes, I can’t deny that…”

“Everybody makes mistakes, Tara. Everybody struggles with pride. You’re not special in this, and the council should know better. But they’re so caught up and blinded by their own pride that they can’t see or acknowledge the human condition. They think they see everything, but they don’t feel at all. Between Vrake, Atris, and Vrook, I’m seriously afraid for where the order is going to end up. That’s why I left after the last war.”

Tara reached out a hand to his arm to try and calm him, now the sympathetic one.

The touch seemed to give him pause and he settled a bit. “I’m sorry Tara…I really didn’t come here to say I told you so…”

“I know,” she said softly. “It means a lot to me that you came at all. Even if I don’t agree with…everything you say…I do appreciate your support. So many friends offered me their’s too. I had eight character testimonies but in the end, it didn’t mean anything to them. Vrake just dismissed them out of hand as if their observations and opinions didn’t matter at all. He even belittled them…”

“Yeah…don’t get me started on Vrake…I would have happily made it nine if I thought it would have made a difference, but there’s no getting through to that one. I think even Vrook doesn’t like Vrake.”

“I don’t think either of them much like anyone but themselves,” she mused.

“Heh, you’re not wrong there. Especially Vrake. He’s one of the most prideful of them all. Guy wouldn’t know compassion if it jumped up and bit him in that shiny faceplate of his.”

“Oh, you know he got a new helmet.”

“Yeah? What, his last one wasn’t pretentious enough?”

Tara snerked at that. “Alright, lets not be petty.”

“You’re right, that’s his apprentice’s job from the sound of it.”

“Gan…” she gave him a flat look.

“Okay okay…”

“I am frustrated too, but maybe it is just time to move on. I am supposed to be letting go of my past hurt…and that should include this.”

Gan shook his head. “They’ll just keep walking all over you, Tara. They’ll keep doing it because you keep letting them. You don’t see what they’ve done to you because you want so badly to be them.”

Her incredulous look returned. “I want to be them?”

“Nhh…that’s not what I meant…you want to be a knight. so badly that you’re willing to do whatever they say, jump through any hoop, cut off the best parts of yourself all for their approval. But you don’t have to. You don’t need them.”

“Gan…”

“They’ve scarred you, Tara.”

She looked down, feeling the familiar ache in her heart. The ache she had worked so hard to get over. That the order had told her she had to leave behind.

“They’ve beaten you down and told you you were wrong for doing what every fiber of your being told you that you were right for doing. They hurt you, you go back. They hurt you again. You go back. They hurt you again, still you go back to them. And every time, they rip open that wound in your heart more and more, and force you to go forward without letting you heal.”

His words brought her eyes down, and her hand came up to wipe a tear away as she trembled, but she closed her eyes and took one of her patented deep breaths, forcing it all back down. “I know you feel that way, Gan…but this is my path.” she said softly.

He looked at her for a long moment.

“You’ve changed a lot,” he said finally, “but still the same in every way that matters…”

Tara blushed a bit and looked away.

Gan got up off the crate and paced around the room for a bit. She looked back to him, watching him pensively.

Back and forth he walked through her spartan accommodations, but eventually gave voice to his ponderings.

“They’re wrong, you know.”

“Hm?”

Gan turned back to Tara. “The council. About what your problem is.”

She quirked a brow. “My problem?”

He nodded. “It’s not pride. It was never pride.”

She gave him a quizzical look.

“The one thing that makes being a jedi hard for you isn’t your pride…it’s your passion.”

“My…passion?”

He stood before her and nodded. “Think about it, Tara. We’ve had some pretty epic arguments, you and I. You’re so intense about everything. You’ve always been intense. Whether its helping people out, doing what you think is right, or protecting others, you throw yourself completely into it. Its like you have this righteous fire burning in you…and it can’t be sated until you accomplish whatever it is you’ve set your mind to.”

She blushes again. “I-uh…just feel I should do my best in everything I attempt.”

“And that’s passion! And it’s brilliant! The order tells you not to be passionate, but you fought so hard to stick up for your fellow jedi, even your chiss friend. She’s not one of the jedi and you got in Vrake’s face about her.” He shook his head. “Nobody who argues like you do can be without passion, and the council can’t stand it. Your passion is beautiful, Tara. It’s part of what makes you beautiful. And I can’t stand the thought of the order stamping it out of you.”

Tara stared up at him as his words lingered in the air between them. He looked back in her eyes, serious and earnest as she had ever seen him, and she felt a fluttering in her chest. Her eyes tensed and watered as she felt her emotions swelling inside her.

And as if triggered, Tara came off the crate in a rush of motion, and lept up to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing her lips to his, kissing him intensely. Tears streamed from her eyes and she didn’t care. All she cared about in that moment was that he was there in front of her, and he had shown her how well he truly knew her, and accepted her.

It took a moment for the bewildered Gan to respond in kind, and they sank into a passionate embrace, but eventually the two’s lips separated and he took a second to look down at her, his hand coming up to run back through her pixie-bowl haircut.

“Passion isn’t always wr…”

His rhetoric was cut off as she kissed him again. She didn’t know if he was right or not. It went against what the code taught her all her life.

Passion, yet serenity.

But maybe it was okay for passion to lead her to serenity, just for one night.

Chapter III - Fin~
FFX - Suteki Da Ne

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#3

Epilogue

Mood Music

Tara’s eyes opened slowly as she came to. Her head resting comfortably on the plush pillow. Gan laid facing away from her under the covers and she let her eyes wonder over the man’s back.

His hair was a short mop of a mess as he rested next to her, and she allowed herself a sweet smile as she recalled the previous night. It was still a bit much to take in. She had never allowed herself something like this, not since the one other time with Seela. And that had ended so badly. But Gan wasn’t Seela. Somehow she knew that this would be different.

Tara inhaled a long breath and sidled up against him, slipping an arm over him under the covers and feeling the warmth of his back against her bare skin. She laid her head down and felt his hand gently take hers as it draped over him and his fingers intertwined with hers.

Was he already awake? Or was it her moving up to him that woke him? It didn’t much matter. She closed her tangled fingers over his hand and she felt him do the same, and there was a brief moment of contentedness in the act, and she let out a soft sigh.

What would her masters say if they caught them like this she wondered. After everything at the trial, they would probably just throw her out of the order all together, she imagined. Vrake would definitely, but he’d made it clear he had no understanding of a person’s physical needs. At least Nulaa had stuck up for her on that one point.

She recalled Gan’s words last night as she listened to his rhythmic breathing. He’d talked about the scar in her heart that the council kept exacerbating. She couldn’t deny that it felt like that was the case. How was it that they had only spent a few months living together in the mountains, but he still seemed to know her so well?

Maybe I’m just simple, she mused to herself. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Who really even knew?

Her attention wandered back to Gan as they laid there together, and she began to wonder all about where he’d been, what was he doing, did he find more of his ancient poetry he was looking for somewhere. He seemed to feel her attention on him because he gave her hand a little squeeze.

A long few moments passed before she gave voice to her wanderings. “I looked for you…” she confessed. “In the cave…when I got back to Viscara. You were gone…”

“Sorry…” he said in a low voice. “I don’t usually stay in the same spot very long. I try to move around as much as I can. Diminishing your presence in the force only goes so far when there’s someone like Vrake on the planet. And I don’t think he’d be happy to find out I was here, probably corrupting his students’ impressionable minds.”

“I never told them about you, you know.”

“Really?”

“Not by name, no. They know someone saved me and nursed me back to health…but I never told them your name, or that you had a history with the order.”

“Huh…you didn’t have to protect me like that.”

“I know,” she conceded. “But still…it didn’t seem right to just give you away after everything you did for me.”

“By that you mean hiding your arm from you and trying to keep you from going back to them…”

She withdrew her hand from his and gave him a little pinch at his side.

“Ack!”

She gave a light snicker as he squirmed away from her then turned over to lay on his opposite side and face her. She smiled at him as she allowed herself to admire his handsome looks for once. He seemed to be doing the same.

“You know what I mean, silly.”

“I know,” he said. “Thanks.”

“Mhm.” She smiled softly as they faced each other. He had been right about the hurt and the scarring, but moments like these seemed to ease her spirit and bring her some peace. Perhaps if she could keep more of these moments for herself, she could…no, that was just her weakness wanting to let him sweep in and make everything okay, which she knew he would do if she let him, but if she did that, then she would never be what she knew she had to be.

No, she had to be stronger, and while this was great, she still had to move forward. She had to let go of that pain that had scarred her heart, and she would have to let go of Gan too. She knew she had been too hard on him in so many occasions, but there was no happily ever after for her. No getting to hide in the mountains making babies. She had a purpose that she had to see through.

She let out a sigh and Gan reached over, pushing some hair out of her face as he looked on her soberly.

“You’re still going back.” It was a statement, not a question. “Aren’t you.”

She afforded a small nod as she looked on him with bittersweet affection. “You know I have to.”

“I know…very few people in the verse are blessed with knowledge of where they belong and what they’re here to do. I can’t fault you for following your heart.”

“It’s not just my heart. There is something coming. And I need to do what I can to be here to fight it when it comes. We all do.”

Gan took a breath and sighed it out at that. “I know, I know. Your master wasn’t the only one feeling that. But…” He paused, seeming about to go into another attempt to steer her away from the order, but stopped, and he considered her for a minute.

“I know you’ll do what you feel you have to…” he said finally, “just…if you’re going to go through with going to the Service Corps…don’t go to the AgriCorps.”

Tara gave him a curious look at the unexpected request.

“You won’t be happy there. It’s good work to be sure, but…I think you’re much better suited for the ExplorCorps.”

She seemed to think on his advice for a bit, but eventually gave him a small nod. “Alright.” A sly smirk touched her lips. “Who am I to argue with one who knows me so well.”

Her smirk turned into a mischievous grin as she pushed him over on his back and climbed up and kissed him again. The two looked on each other after the kiss, smiling at each other, ready to give one another one last goodbye, and then sank together under the covers.

=========================================================

Tara sat in her seat on the transport as it sped through the mottled grey tunnel of hyperspace towards the Praxeum. Her fingers pressed to her lips as she thought about the morning and night before, then internally said her goodbye to him. Something told her it would be the last time she saw him for a good while. She made peace with the feeling and accepted the distance. She would think on him more fondly now of course, but it was time to start looking forward, not back.

A chirp emitted from her tablet and it startled her somewhat. It was the first time someone had called or messaged her in days. She figured everyone was giving her space since the trial, which was appreciated. It was probably best.

She tapped the screen to bring it to life and then curiously checked her inbox. A sweet smile came to her lips as she read the heartfelt message from Qyil. He really was such a gem, she thought to herself as she began to type back a reply.