Moving meditation. When he’d first heard the term he’d done it before, but he’d not had the context or word for it. Now he knew about it, intrinsically, and he practiced it daily, in multiple different ways. From combat practice, to working on his ship, to writing. Almost everything was becoming a form of moving meditation at this point, but that was to be expected, at least from what he understood. He swing the saberstaff again, slowly, making sure to both strike and to parry at the same time. The arc was much wider than with his actual saber, though he didn’t feel like he had the right to be using that right now. His face was cross and creased with concern and worry.
He was causing his master undue stress and pain. It was partially his fault that Shax looked so beaten and trodden down, as well as Vosca. He wasn’t helping anyone in the Order. His thoughts reached into the back of his mind, to those dark times when Skyva and Kathea had both told him exactly what was happening now: The Order didn’t trust him. Yet, unlike those times, when he’d felt hurt and betrayed or even upset, now he was feeling an odd sense of calm. He didn’t blame Master Shax for not trusting him. He definitely couldn’t, after all. He’d done nothing to prove himself trustworthy, or at least, very little.
Slowly, Kairos switched from his saberstaff shii-cho stance, to a makashi one, changing the wide and wild swings to something far more manageable, his meditation creating two illusory opponents to swing at him. He was as much practicing as he was meditating, each swing and stab made to compensate for the double blade itself. He’d watched Sentinel, now and then, and had used his own electroblade, so he had something of a head for the weapon’s use.
What he didn’t understand, what he couldn’t understand, was why it hurt him so much when he saw Shax bothered by a misstep or a mistake. It was… The weapon sung again, spinning in makashi until he stabbed it forward, pushing his imaginary foe back, before pulling it sharply up and behind him to parry an overhead strike.
The same sickening feeling that there was something that he didn’t understand gnawed at him. “He sees you like a son!” But did he, truly? What were they to one another, there was nothing beyond master and student. Kairos Ward, the failure, and Brokisee Shax, the failure’s trainer. How that must’ve bothered the rodian jedi master. Yet despite his suffering and pain, he kept pressing on, trying to impart lessons…that Kairos was apparently just too dumb to fully internalize.
Backing up from the outcrop, he stopped in the center grassy gnoll, defending himself from attacks on all sides with soresu. His fears, his doubts, his anger, his frustration, all assailed him, and yet he still would not allow them into his heart. He kept his soresu stance strong, the eye of the storm, the calm center where nothing would touch, that is what he emulated. Perhaps Shax would simply give up? Send him to the ExplorerCorps where he might be of use until a different knight felt that he’d either learned or saw something else in him. That’s what stung the most. Shax trusted him. HAD trust him and he kept breaking that trust. It was like climbing a mountain where every mistake, each misstep, wasn’t just a short slide, but an enormous drop and he’d done it so many times that he was standing back at the base of the mountain staring up to the summit.
Slowly he came to a stop, a bit of sweat dripping down his forehead. The training saberstaff almost immediately deactivated and collapsed in as he clipped it to the back of his belt and walked off. In his head only two thoughts emerged: Whatever happens, happens and to trust in the force.