Everybody here has loved and lost

[ezra_of_lothal]

WHO: Ezra Bridger and Padme Amidala, also OTA
WHERE: Around in Temba, especially the garden at the Jedi Temple, and the glownie ranch
WHAT: Padme and Ezra talk about Sith Lords, Ezra getting some feelings out with the help of animal friends, and generally being around Temba
WHEN: Sometime in August, after Luke arrives and Obi-wan tells Padme about Mustafar
WARNINGS: Discussion of Anakin becoming Vader, so murder and other violence are among other Star Wars flavor of bad possibilities

1. Closed to Padme

Ezra doesn't have the sort of bond with Padme that he does with Obi-wan - in the purely emotional or psychic sense - but months of sharing the space of the Temba Jedi Temple means he knows her presence well, and has started to pick up on her moods more sometimes without really trying.

Perhaps Padme, who has clearly spent a fair amount of time around Jedi long before meeting Ezra, wouldn't be surprised that not only does he know she's coming out to the temple garden before he sees her, but that he has an inkling of...intentness.

"Something you wanted to talk about?" he asks, lightly, without looking up from his weeding.

2. The glownie ranch, OTA

Sometimes meditation and Jedi mantras aren't enough to lay emotions to rest.

Ezra has next to no shame that he's internalized about displaying emotion, only his awareness that he lives alongside other people with varying empathic ability, so on days when his mood dips, he tends to remove himself from the temple area - away from the somewhat more populated areas of Temba entirely.

Today after feeding the glownies, sometime after he starts brushing them out for wool, he finds himself quietly leaking tears, which makes him pause in his work, puzzled at himself. It's no one thing upsetting him, he decides. In fact, he's not even completely sure it's entirely about his own emotions.

Maybe, he muses to himself, it wasn't just physical safety that had driven him out to the relatively isolated communications tower that had been the closest thing he had to a home for years, on Lothal. Maybe it had partly been, on a less than conscious level, about having quiet in the Force.

It's ok. He can let this built up pressure go off, and he'll feel better.

Being wrapped up in feelings and leaning into the simple physical and emotional warmth of the glownies means he less likely to notice the presence of other people. When he finally does, he startles, and wipes at his face with a hand.


3. Wildcard! Wanna stumble across Ezra gardening or herding some other day? Or somewhere else around Temba? Feel free to hit me up at skipthedemon or skipthedemon
#5032 on discord if you want to bounce an idea around!

Comments

[ezra_of_lothal]

Ezra blinks for a second, then shakes his head.

"I'm probably not great company right now, but I don't mind you being here."

[holtfinder]

"I'm not sure you need to be great company for me."

She walks over to a nearby glownie, running her fingers through its' wool. Steadypaw isn't with her for this, for obvious reasons; no need to scare the beasties.

"Of course if someone's done something to hurt or upset you, I could go deal with them and then come back."

[ezra_of_lothal]

"What?" Ezra's eyes go wider. "No."

And then visibly pulling himself he says more firmly, "Thank you. But it's not like that."

He doesn't know exactly what she'd think was appropriate action, if someone had hurt him and whether he should condone it, anyway. But he can show gratitude for the solidarity without getting into that discussion right this second.

"It's just-" He sighs. "Some of it is someone from home, or um, a possible future from home? Showed up. With mixed news. And him just being here kinda kicked some complicated stuff to the surface for the Temple residents. But mostly I think it's just, uh, emotions. From everyone."

He watches her reaction hopefully. He's not sure how Sending, as she called it, works for her. Maybe it's easy to turn all the way on and off.

But hey, maybe she'd get it.

[holtfinder]

Moonshade had never been sensitive to emotions, not to the degree Ezra is, but there were a few elves around who were, including her chief's boy-cub, Sunstream. His 'magic feeling' had reached elves halfway across the globe, and he would one day send out the Call that would unite all tribes.

She wasn't sure what to make of Sunstream or his magic, but she remembers how overwhelming it got for him sometimes.

Still, her own emotional leakage is reigned in after he says that. Not completely shielded, more like she calms herself so there isn't as much frenetic feralness surrounding her. It's the sort of thing she'd do for her mate, when he's angry; she becomes the steady rock on the other end of the connection. A point on which to anchor.

"Possible future homes are a complicated manner. Time is a broken wheel, when the future comes back to try to change the past." She sounds like she has experience with that matter.

[ezra_of_lothal]

He's more consciously aware of the smoothing out of her emotions than he'd been of picking up anything from her before. Like a background hum suddenly dropping out, the quiet's suddenly more noticeable.

"Oh. Thank you," he says, tension in his posture easing. He gently runs a brush through the wool closest to him, and then glances back over at Moonshade.

"You've seen time travel before?" he checks. She could be talking about visions, though he's not sure there's much of a practical difference, at least as far as emotional fall out is concerned.

[holtfinder]

"I have...seen the result of time travel before. There was an elf named Rayek, who thought he could bring the crystal palace of the High Ones back to the time of their arrival, and tell them they'd come too early, allowing them to reach Abode in the time they'd originally planned to. We thought he was going to...undo all of us, by doing so. But something went wrong, and he brought the palace and those in it forward in time. Including the chief's mate and cubs. He spent thousands of years mourning them--only to be reunited with them again after all that time had changed him."

The word she uses for 'thousands' in her language doesn't translate exactly. It's more like 'many eights', as makes sense given the three-fingered hands. But the concept is close enough.

[ezra_of_lothal]

"Oh, hey, I kinda did a tiny version of that," Ezra says, surprised he can relate to her story so straightforwardly. "There was a doorway in the temple on my homeworld that opened to this...in between place with portals to moments in time. And for about two years we thought Ahsoka had been killed in a fight or the cave in around us - which she'd pushed me clear of - but there she was, moments after I'd last seen her, fighting-" He gestures, and clenches his fist, echoing his movement back then. "I pulled her through to me, and she was ok."

Then he shakes his head. "But then I went looking for the moment my first master died. And Ahsoka explain how that was different. I couldn't save Kanan without risking everything he'd died saving, including myself in the past."

He ducks his head and lets out a shaky breath. His grief for Kanan isn't the days old fresh it had been when he first came to Agra 10, but it's bubbled up again in the wake of Luke arriving and talking about being the last Jedi in the galaxy.

[holtfinder]

She doesn't intrude on his grief, doesn't rush to reassure him. There's instead a moment of silence, but for his breathing and hers. And the typical noises glownies make, of course.

When she does speak, it's gentle. "It probably felt really unfair. That you could get her back, and not him."

[ezra_of_lothal]

He appreciates the near silence, as he works on trying to breathe through his feelings and at least try to let them some of it all go.

"It did," he admits. "I told her that she didn't know what she was asking me to do. But that wasn't fair of me to say. She couldn't save her master, either."

If only because Anakin hadn't wanted to be saved.

He hadn't been lying when he'd told her that he thought a lot of what was making him cry was the emotions of everyone around him. But since he lives mostly closely with members of Anakin Skywalker's family, well, a lot of the emotions flow back to that one person, one way or another.

He scrubs at his face, and out another hard breath. "Force, I am angry at someone. Wow. Ok. I guess I knew that already."

His gaze darts over to Moonshade. "Not someone here," he adds, quickly.

[holtfinder]

"Oh. Big ripples if you're angry at them still, here. Is that something you want to talk about?"

What she means is that the anger's unproductive, if that person can't be confronted. But for the emotion to linger there must still be some effect here, on Ezra. She can't manage to work up the same rage here over the enemies of her tribe--Rayek, Winnowill, the trolls--as she could when those threats were more immediate.

[ezra_of_lothal]

"Yeah." He tips his head back, thinking.

"Yeah, I think I do because you're not that involved. If that's ok. But, just so you know, literally everyone else who actually resides in the temple area here is his close family, by nearly anyone's definition. And everyone but the actual babies have all been hurt by him, physically, or emotionally, or both, about as bad as someone can be, and they're all trying to figure out to heal from that, among all the other bad things. It's a big mess."

[holtfinder]

"I bet that feels awful because you can't hold him responsible for all the pain he's caused, even though you're dealing with the results every day. Like he's gotten away with it, and left you here with hurts you can't really heal."

She still had feelings of that nature, regarding several enemies of her tribe.

[ezra_of_lothal]

"Yeah, that," he agrees, stabbing a finger in her direction.

"And part of that possible future Luke told me about is how Anakin died - in that future at least - and it's like...he got to do one good thing, not let his own son die horribly at the hands of a man who's been ruining the galaxy for decades. Who Anakin has been the attack dog for, for decades. And then he gets to be done. Some of us have to live with our bad choices."

And Anakin's too, but that's already been said.

[holtfinder]

"And it doesn't feel like enough. It's not all balanced by that one act, and that doesn't sit right with you."

She gestures something like a seesaw with one hand; her people don't have scales to balance, but they've got a fighting game played on a pair of teeter-totters blindfolded.

[ezra_of_lothal]

"There's that," Ezra says with a slow nod.

"But mostly...I don't understand how all the people who loved him weren't enough for him. Ahsoka - he was her master. And the person trying to kill her, when I pulled her through that portal. Padme bore his children, but Obi-wan saw Anakin hurt her badly. Saw her die from that. Obi-wan loved him and trained him, but Luke says it's Anakin that will kill him. Rex - he's not even here. He taught me how to be a soldier, back home. But he was so proud to have served under Anakin, and it would hurt him so much if he knew was behind the enforcer's mask. That Anakin betrayed all of them."

[holtfinder]

"It almost sounds like he was trying to wipe out everything good in his life. Even if it wasn't deliberate, that was the effect in the end, right?"

She shakes her head. "Sorry. Even if we nailed down reasons or what he thought he was doing, that doesn't help you now."

[ezra_of_lothal]

Ezra blows out a breath.

"Well, he became a Sith, like Obi-wan talked about the Howl. Wiping out anything he thought...weakened him or held him back from becoming more powerful is consistent with the ways of the Sith. I just don't know why he committed to that path to begin with. Or why he decided saving his son was more important."

[holtfinder]

"I don't know either. But perhaps he felt somehow disempowered, if he thought becoming a Sith and seeking power would make things better." She quietly reaches out, laying a hand on Ezra's arm. No real answers, just elfmom comfort.

[ezra_of_lothal]

He knows he's not likely to ever get any real answers, either. In the end, he'll just have to let it go, as best he can.

Right his moment, he leans into her touch some, although he's careful not to put weight into it. "Thanks. For listening. I know I just dumped a lot on you. But it I think admitting that I'm angry out loud did help."

[holtfinder]

"It's no trouble, really. I used to listen to Strongbow rant all the time about our chief--regardless of if the chief at the time was Bearclaw or his son, Cutter. I know how telling someone what your feeling helps."

If she sounds wistful as she mentions her lifemate, well, she is.

[ezra_of_lothal]

Ezra picks up on that feeling, and tries to think of something that wouldn't sound stupid to say, but then he gives up and just...pushes his sympathy towards her. He's not sure how much she has to be 'tuned it', but hopefully it would carry.

There's a time when it's good to say stuff out loud, but sometimes it's good to have a different avenue of communication.

[holtfinder]

Moonshade smiles, feeling that wave of emotion aimed at her. "Thank you. It's probably a good thing Strongbow isn't here, though. I can definitely see him having a hard time. He has strong opinions about how to live by the Way, and this place doesn't bend to expectations much."

[ezra_of_lothal]

"The Way is...the traditions of the Wolfriders?" Ezra asks. "Or, uh, wider elf traditions?"

He'd followed easily enough from her story at the Howl that there were different tribes with different traditions. How much they had in common, too, he was less clear on.

[holtfinder]

"The Way belongs to the Wolfriders. One of our chiefs, Huntress Skyfire, created it to help us protect ourselves, as humans became smarter and stronger and started moving out into the forests. The other tribes have their own traditions. For the Sun Folk, there's an elder among the tribe who's a child of the Firstcomers, and she serves them as their Mother of Memory. Meanwhile, the Go-Backs have braved the coldest parts of the world, all with the hope of returning to the crystal palace. To go back, literally, was the driving force of their culture. It made everything they endured worth it."

[ezra_of_lothal]

"Right. Your people can live a really long time."

He thinks over the little bits of elvish history she's told him. "So the High Ones coming forward in time - did that alter how the tribes interacted? Since they're your ancestors and, I'm guessing, have traditions that are even older?"