revivalproject | closed ☾

"Freckles, yes," she repeats, as if she knew all along, something warm lodging behind her ribs hearing him laugh. She... likes making him laugh, alright? It's nice.

She studies his face a moment longer, leaning forward a little bit—now that she's looking for them, she can see that he still has his freckles, very faint compared to when he was a child—and that's not to mention his scars, even more pronounced to her now that she has an image in her head without them. She wonders if she looks any different to him, after he'd seen her without her tattoos?

"Hm," she intones again, arch, leaning back and crossing her arms over her chest. "It means that I am not surprised. You have not changed very much, Cal Kestis." After all, he's still a quick learner, eager to please, and maybe a little too curious and adventurous for his own good—at least in her opinion.

It's still strange to talk about such things, of a past that hadn't been real and yet still held some truth to themselves. But Cal doesn't feel he minds it, although as Merrin stares at him again he can't help but feel a little self-conscious. He also can't help but look at her in turn as she leans in, his hand starting to lift from its crossed position as though he'd bring it to her face, the idea caught and aborted with a brief but confused smile as he readjusted his folded arms.

Her skin had a warmer tone in his memories, but she'd always been naturally pale. She smiled a lot more as a child, but then they didn't have much to worry about then, and even later on her smiles didn't have the almost mocking edge of the one she frequented here. Certainly she'd teased, but it was more natural since they'd supposedly known each other for so long. But there was still a gap for the time she'd left, moved away after the unthinkable had happened to her family. Those had been sad, empty days.

"Was that pretty close to how you were, as a child?" he asks. Hard to change her mind once she'd gotten set on something, a bit of a competitive streak. She had that bit of curiosity and hunger for adventure too.

Unlike Cal, she doesn't get self-conscious at all, no matter how long he might happen to stare at her. That abortive movement he makes with his hand, though—no, she's trying not to think about it. It feels like dangerous territory, for some reason.

Her gaze slides away from his, something a little wistful in it. "Yes. I was..." Stubborn, independent, direct. All things she still is, but back then... she was softer, quick to smile and laugh. Perhaps that's what happens when you mature, but she can't help but feel like that little girl was stolen away from her the day her sisters were massacred. She'd certainly turned into someone her younger self would barely recognize—first by grief, and then by anger and vengeance.

"As you remember," she finishes, just a little subdued. She has to force it back out of her tone, forming it into something lighter, more teasing. "Do you think I have changed?"

Those were harsh circumstances that no one would normally ever expect to happen. It saddens him that even in a made-up place, Merrin's past followed closely to what she knew.

"At least I was able to share something of it with you." Was that a strange thing to say? Having already left his lips, Cal doesn't regret saying what he has since he means it. He's glad to have gotten some glimpse of how she'd been, that she'd had some happiness at least, even if she'd already told him a little about how things had been for her and her sisters, before everything.

His hand lifts again, but this time to tap her lightly on the nose with a finger. "A little," he says, but with those kind of circumstances, it would have been difficult to not be affected by things at all. "But you're still you."

Is it strange? If it is, she doesn't mind. The opposite of minding, actually—hearing him say that makes her heart feel suddenly full in her chest, and a warm smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. "Yes. It is weird to have these memories, but not unwelcome."

Then he reaches out to tap his finger against her nose, and she stiffens in surprise, caught off guard. The touch, brief as it was, feels like a jolt of electricity running through her—his touches usually do, all the way back to when he put the astrium in her hands in Kujet's Tomb, fingers brushing against hers. At first, she thought that was just... that she'd just lived in isolation for too long, but now...

"It is..." she begins a little awkwardly, after a too-long pause, "good to know that some things in this galaxy stay the same." After everything the two of them have been through, with their entire lives upended more than once, that's actually a comforting thought.

He wonders that he might have overstepped some unspoken boundaries when she abruptly tenses, mentally fumbling for an explanation for his actions and coming up empty. But then Merrin speaks again, putting an end to the awkward silence that had followed, and a brief laugh escapes instead of the quiet sigh of relief he'd meant to expel.

"Yeah..." Cal agrees. He knows it isn't always the case, that sometimes people can change a great deal, and change itself is impossible to avoid. In the end it depends on them, the choices made and the actions taken.

"I don't know how long it might take for our memories to settle, and I think that they're not going to be so easy to just ignore or forget, because they're a part of us now. But so long as we know who we are, and who we want to be, then that's what really matters."

She's quiet for a moment, but this pause is thoughtful, not awkward, and her expression clears as if a burden was lifted from her shoulders. Leave it to Cal to give her some perspective—a nice perspective, one that rearranges her tangled feelings into something meaningful.

He's right. No matter what, she's still her. And perhaps an extra life—a happy life—isn't such a bad thing.

"Are all Jedi so wise?" Her tone is playful, but ultimately very sincere.

Talking it out with her has certainly helped Cal have a better handle on his own feelings and thoughts on things as well. He smiles, giving a shrug.

"We try, anyway," he laughs. "I think what really made the difference was having someone to sound off of, who understands the situation. Sometimes I guess it's better than trying to tackle it yourself." But he can understand the need for some time alone as well.

"I... am not used to relying on others," she admits, and it does feel like an admission, some part of her left exposed. She fiddles with the bolt on the worktable again, rolling it back and forth underneath her fingers, her gaze averted.

After her sisters were killed, she was left alone, with no one to depend on—not even Malicos, really, since he was more than happy to simply manipulate her. It made her learn to fend for herself, but maybe too much—it's why she was so reluctant to trust Cal, at first. Why she felt she had to test him. Why she still tends to try to... tackle things herself, even if it that isn't the best way.

"But I am glad," she continues softly. "That you understand." That I can rely on you.

"I know how that is," Cal replies quietly. She probably knows that, they've talked about their pasts before, about being alone and on their own, unable to trust others so easily. It's been some work learning to extend that trust again, letting himself open up and allow himself to give other a chance to be relied upon.

It's all too easy to fall back to that sort of mindset, but he feels he's come a long way, here. There are good people around him, even other Jedi. But while he's all too aware that whenever they might be sent back to where they're from, when they're from, at least he knows there's at least one person he can still look forward to seeing on the other side of things.

He knows that admission from Merrin isn't an easy one, but that's what makes it mean so much. The smile he gives her at that is a warm one as he nods, an expression that echoes the sentiment of her words.

His smile seems to sink into her, the warmth of it settling into all her dark corners, and she abandons the bolt so that she can return a smile of her own, soft around the edges. It's amazing to her how... easy this is, when someone else understands. She doesn't have to explain herself to Cal, because he already gets it—even if the circumstances are different, their stories are the same.

Maybe it's weird, but there's something immensely comforting in that, and it's kind of... exactly what she needed. Needs.

"It seems we are always connected in some way, no matter the life," she muses, a thoughtful expression on her face. Okay, two instances probably aren't enough to go on, but... she's going with it anyway, wondering what it was that created their story for them, and why. They could've been anything else besides friends—classmates, neighbors, enemies. Strangers. "Is that strange?"

"Maybe it's the Force, maybe it's here," Cal suggests, shrugging a little. It's not lost on him the fact that things could have been a lot worse, but for whatever reason, whether just random or influenced by their already existing relationship, it hadn't.

"I don't know if I'd call it strange. It's not bad though, right?"

Bad? No, she definitely wouldn't say that it's bad. In fact, the idea of them being complete strangers in some other life or universe makes her... sad. Then again, it would've been very possible if her sisters or his Order had survived—without that tragedy, they would have no reason to meet. Jedi and Nightsisters don't travel together, after all.

Is she going to say as much, though? No. "Not entirely," she says, one corner of her mouth quirking up to reveal that she's teasing, even if she sobers quickly. "Perhaps it is just strange to think of a place where we do not meet at all."

It's definitely a different angle to consider things. It's like thinking about the empty space in a picture, rather than focusing on the actual subject. What would it have been like? They'd just go on with however they'd been.

"Yeah..." It's a sad thing to think about. To not have found someone to really connect with, to not have been able to grow. Maybe there would be other opportunities for them to change, although who could say if it would be for the better? Or maybe...they'd just be as they were.

"Just...knowing that if maybe I'd done something differently here or hadn't failed there, I might've never even gone to Dathomir. But that's where things have ultimately led me." No, he would have missed an important lesson if he never went to Dathomir. And who knows what greater harm Malicos might have caused if another Jedi hadn't stumbled into things, to reveal his true intent.

"Having met you, and been on this path we're on, I think I'd rather not think about how things could have been, otherwise," he admits.

Nightsisters, as a general rule, don't believe in things like fate or destiny or even "the will of the Force" that Jedi like Cal put so much faith in. They believe in shaping their own lives and rules with strength and sisterhood. But maybe, just this once, she might give Cal this one. It certainly feels like their lives intersected for a reason, and if that was the Force at work, then... she'll let it slide.

And... it's nice. Hearing him say that he wouldn't choose a different path. Hearing him say we. It does something to her, somewhere in the vicinity of her heart.

"Me neither," she says sincerely, her head tipping slightly to the side. "You say that even though you haven't returned to Dathomir yet?" Last he remembers, she'd raised her dead sisters and he'd been forced to flee. Sure, she filled him in a bit on what happened after, but... maybe she still feels guilty, a little.

It wasn't the most pleasant of notes that he'd last left Dathomir, he knows. Being chased by the undead had been a final, additional blow that he hadn't needed then, not when he was already on emotionally unsteady ground. But being able to look at a bigger picture, he can see how maybe even those things were necessary. Maybe not even solely to him.

"I know there's something that I need to do there." Cal meets her eyes again. "Things haven't been great or gone smoothly, but I know I why I set out to do what I have. I just needed that push. But everything that's happened, or will happen along the way is just as important as that reason."

She can't help but think that Cal has a very charitable way of looking at things—she's not sure she would describe siccing the Nightbrothers and her dead sisters on him as "not great." In fact, she thinks that if she'd just listened to him in the first place when he said that they could help each other, things would've gone a hell of a lot smoother for the both of them.

But... "Perhaps you're right. Just this once," she says quietly, a subdued smile pulling at one corner of her mouth. She doesn't know if she would've been ready to make peace with him then, too weighed down by her anger and Malicos' lies. Maybe she'd needed to overhear that conversation outside Kujet's tomb, to see Malicos betray her with her own eyes, to let it galvanize her.

At the time, she was so furious with his betrayal that she hadn't paid much attention to Cal, or given any kind of second thought to what Malicos had said to him. But his lightsaber had been broken, forcing him to run to the Mantis, and some... part of him had been broken too, she feels like. When he returned to Dathomir again, he has different, somehow, in a way it would be hard for her to explain.

"What happened in the tomb? Before you left Dathomir." That tomb was a terrible place, even by Dathomir's standards. Something must have happened to him there.

"...a test. I think." Cal still isn't sure if it's exactly that or simply the dark nature of Dathomir. But then the dark side of the Force is still part of the Force...

"I had to confront my master. We fought, except I only realized later that he wasn't really on the offensive. But he just...just kept goading me to attack. Telling me I was a failure, that I was weak..." He wonders if it'll ever get easy recounting this, even after he's come to accept responsibility. "I...I actually struck him with my lightsaber, and that's when he grabbed a hold of it and crushed it in his hands. Telling me I wasn't a Jedi."

He shakes his head, crossing his arms as he lets out a breath. "When I opened my eyes I was back in the tomb by the locked doors, with a broken lightsaber in my hands. It just felt like everything was falling apart at that point."

So that tomb is even more terrible than she'd thought. She remembers Malicos taking her there, and she'd hated every second in that place, hated him. Her instincts hadn't been wrong.

There's a part of her that wants to take his hand, hearing him talk about his experience with obvious difficulty—but he crosses his arms and she shoves the impulse aside. "This is what happened, before you arrived here?" It's more a rhetorical question than anything, but it just further lodges that shard of guilt into her soul.

Her assessment hadn't been so far off. After going through all that, having everything fall apart, and then arriving here... she shifts her weight a little, eyebrows knitting. "I am sorry." Her gaze flickers to the side, and then back to his again. "For raising my sisters. I was angry with Malicos, and I didn't care if you were hurt alongside him."

Cal nods, lips twisting in a brief, ironic smile. "In a way it kind of worked in my favor. It gave me something else to think about. But I also thought that if I'd slowed down and let everything catch up with me, I wouldn't be able to keep going forward."

It hadn't been foolproof, of course. There was no way that he'd forget so simply the things that had happened to him, the wounds that had been reopened from years past. Still, distractions had helped, and people here knew nothing about who he was or had any expectations of him.

The apology comes as unexpected, and Cal turns his head towards her. "You didn't know. You were trying to do what was best for yourself and the legacy of your sisters." He smiles faintly, one end quirking up just a bit higher. "Although I could have done without being chased by them," he notes, just a touch dryly. When the world seemed to be crashing around you after being accused of betrayal by a ghost the last thing you wanted was to be pursued by the undead.

"Yes. It was the fastest I have seen you run." It's said in her favorite deadpan tone—not the one where she's actually joking, but the one where she's being brutally honest. It's true.

But... there he goes again, describing things a lot more charitably than she ever would. If she's being honest, she wasn't thinking about herself or the legacy of her sisters at all in that moment—she was just hurt and angry, and she wanted to make Malicos pay for his betrayal. Cal was just caught in the crossfire, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And before that—she'd put her faith in the wrong man and allowed him to manipulate her into violence against someone who would've been her friend before her enemy. She still... struggles with that, even with Cal's voice in her head telling her that Malicos was wrong to use her loss against her. But guilt and regret aren't so easy to negotiate with.

"You are strangely forgiving, Cal Kestis," she says, and there's a softer quality in her voice, underneath the usual harsh inflections of her accent. Then she pauses, her head suddenly canting to the side. "How did you hear about my sisters?" As far as he should know, she hasn't told him about the armored warrior, or Malicos promising her revenge against the Jedi.

His cough isn't quite a laugh and honestly he's not sure how to take that, but he decides it probably was true. "When you have good enough incentive..." He shrugs, wrinkling his nose a little.

"I give chances. I don't mean to go anywhere to pick fights, although these days I have to be prepared for that happening more often than not." The Empire doesn't give chances, unfortunately. "I only know so much from what you told me," Cal admits then. "That they were all gone, and it was just you and the Nightbrothers. And back on Dathomir there were these echoes... some of the ones I sensed were probably from Malicos' arrival, the initial distrust in him."

He looks at her almost apologetically, feeling that he'd infringed upon something private, not that he knew what to expect from those echoes until he was experiencing them. "But I found one of...a Nightsister, a survivor of something terrible. Alone." Sad.

"Yes. Of course." Maybe she should've guessed that it was his rare ability to see the past. It makes sense—the history of the Nightsisters must be written all over Dathomir, including her own. And in the end... it was just her own, years of mourning and laying her sisters to rest and seeking her revenge. Alone, as he said.

She's not sure exactly how she feels knowing that he'd experienced one of her own memories, or however the echoes feel to him, not to mention one that was so painful and personal to her. But what's done is done. And in the end...

"What you found was true. An armored warrior came in the night, wielding many of your lightsabers," she explains carefully, gesturing to his lightsaber, "and cut down my sisters, until I was the last. Alone." She swallows, her gaze averted. Even with six years of distance from the loss, recounting it still isn't... easy.

"I told you this, when you returned. Perhaps I did not have to," she adds, a thoughtful note in her voice. It's a little forced, but she's trying her best.

"Maybe not... But sometimes it helps. It doesn't necessarily make that pain go away, but...it helps other people understand more about where you're coming from, what you've gone through."

An armored warrior with lightsabers. It's no wonder she had it out for Jedi. Cal lets his arms loosen from their folded stance, gesturing vaguely with his hands. "Back when we visited Coruscant, one of the Jedi masters at the temple had Master Kenobi, Ezra, Grogu and I meditate together in the Force. Each of us had some painful things we'd gone through, and she'd hoped that in confronting and sharing the experiences, we could begin the healing process." He shakes his head, smiling bitterly. "I'm...actually not so sure how well that worked for some of us, but I think the idea was kind of on the right track."

"Sharing the experiences," she repeats, as if testing out how the idea sounds. She'd seen Cal meditating before, and wondered if it was something all Jedi did or just him—it seems that she has her answer.

Nightsisters don't meditate, really, but they do come together as a group to perform powerful magick together, pooling their energy for spells and rituals. Sometimes, it can feel like falling into a trance, surrounded in all ways by the power and energy of your sisters and Dathomir itself. Connected. As if they were all sharing the same breath, the same spirit.

She allows herself a small pang of grief, that she would never have that feeling of infinite closeness to her sisters again, and then tucks it away. "I did not know that Jedi could share their experiences in this way," she comments, almost as if to herself, before adding, "Did it work for you?"

closed ☾

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