revivalproject | Awkward alliteration allays anxiety

Entry tags:

Awkward alliteration allays anxiety

WHO: Luke Skywalker + OTA
WHERE: TEMBA - Temple and loose in the city
WHAT: Exercise, practice, not knowing what to do with no active war...
WHEN: Within a week of arrival?
WARNINGS: Description of canon injury scars. Will add in comment headers as relevant.

Like most Jedi, Luke is an early riser.

It's more by habit than any desire to be awake. Tatooine hours run from pre dawn to near midday, then start again in the late afternoon. The Rebellion runs on no known clock or cycle known to the Force and Yoda ran on 'will this help push Luke over the edge and make him quit' time. And since the Endor mission, Luke hasn't slept well, plagued by memories dredged up by Palpatine's actions, startling awake several times a night and often with a soft thump of dropping furniture back to the ground.

He's up before dawn to grab water and something light the eat and then takes off for a run, to try and burn off the night's nightmares. It's actually past sun up by the time he finishes, moving to a private-ish area outside and moving into some katas. It's one of the few times he can be found without his tunic and robes hiding him from neck to wrist to ankle, instead barefoot and wearing only an undershirt and pants as he moves through the familiar motions of the different forms.

It's pretty clear why he covers up. He has dark pink scarring covering his chest and shoulders and upper arms, fractal lightning trees that must grow from somewhere around the middle of his chest, under the singlet. He still wears one glove to cover the damage on his right hand that he never quite got around to getting fixed, the metal ring in his forearm the only real hint that there's something abnormal about it. He has a couple of puncture marks in his shoulders that were never treated with bacta and he moves like he's never had an injury in his life, pure, fluid strength and grace.

He practices with the lightsaber a bit longer than usual, to make sure he's top of his game in this place. Then it's a shower, breakfast and get on with the day...

Which is wandering around trying to work out what people who aren't fighting a war do with all this time.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Hm." Luke rubs a hand through his hair and looks at the speeder. "It's weird. I know how this works. But the tech here just... doesn't make sense the same way."

He doesn't know if that makes sense to anyone else.

"Later. You wanted some stuff moved?"

Cobb taps his temple right near a nasty looking scar that had faded with age. "Took the data point that lets me understand it. It's the only way to make all this tech make sense."

He wasn't exactly happy with that. Aliens poking around in his mind was not a comfortable thought but the skill had proved useful so he kept it.

"Yeah, yeah, come on, I'll show you." Cobb leads him inside the house and to a side room that was probably some sort of sitting room. In the middle is a pile of torn down wall and rubble. "Need to move this out. Would take a long time by hand."

"How does that... work? The data point things." There's technical information, sure, but that's not really what he's asking.

He follows Cobb inside and looks at the rubble. "And where do you want the pile?"

"No idea." Cobb shrugs. "You touch it and it's in your head."

It's a strange sensation to suddenly have knowledge that wasn't there before. Cobb is still uneasy about it but he needed it so that he could fix up these houses and be a little more useful.

"Outside the house is fine. I haven't really gone through it to see if anything's useful." And being a good scavenger Cobb would do that before he started to throw things away.

"Huh."

That sounds creepy.

Luke decides out the window is easiest for the rubble. He closes his eyes and lets himself slip into the Force, aware of the stones and bits and pieces among them and then silently asking them to lift.

The pile lifts and spreads, each piece individually floating up and then moving out through the window.

It's certainly no worse than other things that have been forced into Cobb's head. At least this isn't a chip that will blow up and kill him.

"You know, it's an impressive bit of... something." Cobb wiggles his fingers as he watches Luke just lift rubble like it's nothing.

He doesn't understand the Force or feel it but it's always interesting to watch it in action. Cobb's seen the other Jedi train and do some stuff but he still doesn't really get any of it.

"Mm?" He opens his eyes and keeps shifting everything outside. "Yeah. First time I ever saw Master Yoda really use the Force to shift something significant, it was mind blowing." He can manage talking and moving these these days."

Cobb isn't easily impressed. The Jedi make it look so easy and while he knows they train he admires hand to hand fighters like Din or gunfighters like Cayde a little bit more. They don't have any mystical Force helping them out.

"If you want practice moving heavy things I'm sure I can find plenty of rubble that needs clearin' out." Cobb could easily find work for anyone willing to lend a hand. He never thought to see if clearing out junk could be training for the Jedi.

He'd have to talk to Obi-Wan about that.

"I don't need practice but I'm happy to help. Some of the others might want to practice, though. Obi-Wan would know better than me who needs it." He hasn't been here long enough to even settle himself, let alone start learning the minutiae of others.

"My master, Yoda, he was the same species as the little one at the Temple, Grogu. I saw him lift my X-Wing from total submersion in a swamp with little trouble. It was... humbling?"

"Yeah, I'll go have a chat with him." Cobb figures one of those time he goes to see Grogu and Din he'll take a moment to talk with Obi-wan. They haven't had a little chat in awhile.

"There's more like him?" He's surprised. For all his years in Mos Espa he never saw any alien like Grogu. "Huh. I guess he can't be the only one of his kind. It's a big galaxy."

"There was. Master Yoda died shortly before I cam here. He was nine hundred years old and just sort of... wound down." He died of old age. Or possibly just got sick of dealing with the world's bantha shit. "He was bigger than Grogu. Though honestly, not by a huge amount."

That was a long life to live. Cobb felt worn down at fifty but hopefully Grogu hadn't lived as hard a life as he had.

"Good to know the kid's gonna outlive me by a couple centuries," he says with small little smile.

"I assume that's not a Force thing but just a species thing." He didn't think Obi-Wan and Luke would live that long just because they tapped into something else.

"Just a few centuries. Not more than a dozen," Luke promised.

"Maker, I hope it's a species thing." He knows it is. The sentiment still stands. "Yes, I'm fairly sure it is. I have no idea what his species is, but I haven't heard of other Force users living those sort of lengths without some sort of very wrong interventions."

"Hope the kid doesn't feel too alone in the galaxy." Cobb didn't think the kid was lonely. He had Din and he had the Jedi and he had Cobb. There were a whole group of people looking after the kid.

"Thanks for this," he said with a little nod at Luke. "I know I ambushed you into it."

And Luke had just come along. He would have to pay the kid back one day.

"He could probably befriend some wookies, they have a pretty long life span." Chewie was still in his prime at around two hundred. "And Hutts are very long lived, but I don't know if you really want to befriend them..."

Luke shrugs. "No big deal. I'm happy to help out. I've been in active warzones for the last five years, being here is sort of weird." Too much time and space to do nothing much.

"They aren't so bad when they're little. Long as they aren't raised by other entitled pieces of snot." Cobb had a history with Hutts, mostly trying to raise one but that didn't really work out. He's only got a vague idea of what happened to the little one.

He nodded in agreement. "Tatooine's like that. Not much time to be idle except when the Twins are at their peak. Gotta keep myself busy or I'll lose my mind."

With the debris out of his way Cobb grabbed his tools and started to work on the electrical in the walls that was damaged.

"Every Hutt I've met tried to kill me." He doesn't have the best view of them and he can admit that.

"And being at war is much the same. Without a midday shut down." He comes over, crouching to look at the wiring.

Normally, he would look and he would know. He would be able to see how it should work and why it isn't. But that isn't happening and it's... frightening. "You said it's a data point lets you understand this?"

Every Hutt Cobb met had wanted to own him. He shared that view point but the little Huttlette had just been a baby and didn't deserve to die for being born.

"Ask around and someone will have something for you to do." Cobb steps to the side so that Luke can have a better view of the wiring.

"You can get it close to here." Cobb pointed in the direction of the power station. "Just touch it and all this information gets dumped in your brain and you understand all this. And how to make the crystals that power all of it too."

Luke plonks himself down on his arse in the dust and rubble and watches what Cobb's doing with open interest. "Is there a down side to getting this information? Does it do something to you as well?"

"Not that I can tell." Cobb twisted some wires together. "Folks have been here a lot longer with these things in their head and they're doin' fine."

He shrugged. "You gotta decide if the knowledge is worth it to you. I couldn't fix these houses up without this and people should have a better place to live than a ship."

He certainly didn't like the cramped nature of the ship he'd been assigned. The house was a lot better even in bad condition.

He wants to fly. He loves flying and moving fast.

But not being able to build things might just drive him insane first.

"I might... I'm going to think about that. I need to be able to help somehow. More than "mash these fruits" or "move rubble", you know?"

"There is one for flyin'," Cobb pointed out. "Piloting. It's by the hangars. You'll know how to work on the ships and fly 'em when the time comes."

Because he could tell just from a few conversations that Luke was a fly boy. He was a lot like Poe that way. That same sort of fast energy.

"It's only happened once since I've been here and the ships weren't flyin' long but it does happen." He didn't like living on ships but the flying part hadn't been so bad when it was so brief.

Luke shakes his head.

"It's not about what I want. It's about what's best for the community. Engineering is far more useful for people on a day to day basis."

"I can't argue that point too hard." Because that was how Tatooine was. It wasn't about you and your wants most of the time. It was about the community around you. Very few people survived on their own on Tatooine and those that tried were often considered crazy.

"But you have been grabbed up here without anyone askin'. Maybe one little thing for yourself ain't bad." Cobb had his private stash of spotchka and he'd kept the grill for himself after the beach party. A person could have a few things to themselves even here. "And there's always other ways to help without takin' the data."

Tatooine was good training to be a Jedi in some ways. It made you always think of the community, if you wanted to survive. Even Ben, known as a crazy hermit, was known and interacted with the settlements sometimes.

"What can I help with? Aside from moving rocks." That was pretty self evident.

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