Ask Coruscant Fractured

[Crix Aran]

He hadn't wanted to go anywhere else.

There were Temples he could go to, friends he could ask for help and Jedi Masters he could turn to for guidance... and none of them had entered his head. Ever since waking up in the cargo hold of the Spirit of Serendipity, the ship he had taken upon Hannibal's death, he had wanted to see one person and only one person. He went through the motions that were expected of him and gave a brief report to a droid who could give it to the Jedi Council so they would know that Dantooine was unsafe.

He stayed with Thelian and Clove in the medical bay, staying purely to make sure that they were alright. That they would live and that he hadn't failed them anywhere near as much as he thought that he had. How much he feared he had let them down... he needed to make sure that they were going to survive and that was what he did because he needed to do it.

But the only thing he wanted to do didn't involve a single Jedi or a Temple or getting himself fully healed up or anything like that - because all that he wanted to do was see his mom.

Maybe he was too old for it but he didn't care.

He wanted to see his mom.

Landing Hannibal's ship was the job of the piloting droids Hannibal had always used, leaving Crix free so that he might sleep on the journey. It had been a pretty thin hope that he would be able to sleep. His eyes were red and raw from tears and sleep proved elusive despite how exhausted he was because every time he closed his eyes he saw it again.

Saw Raze standing and Hannibal broken on the ground behind him.

It was all he could see when he settled down to finally try and rest but he knew that he couldn't go on like that. He needed something to grab onto, someone who could ground him and let him finally have something close to security again. The touch of the familiar and the warmth of someone who would love him no matter how badly he failed, no matter how many people died because he wasn't strong enough... he hoped.

He rang the bell and as the door opened he felt the tears welling up again even as he tried so desperately to smile. In some attempt to look less like the lost and scared little boy he felt like as he stood there, left arm in a sling, shoulder bandaged heavily with cuts all over his face, standing in front of his mom with nothing (and everything) to say.

"Mom I..." his voice broke despite himself, "Mom I'm sorry I couldn't... I couldn't..."

And without any warning he was almost babbling as the tears started to streak down his face.

He just didn't have the words.

@Sreeya

 

[Trys Aran]

Trys was never the same again since her captivity among the Sith. Even though Hannibal brought her back, there were certain elements that were changed forever. She wasn’t as quick with her reflexes, and despite counseling she was still struggling with the trauma she experienced. Trys voluntarily stepped back from the more dangerous and high risk missions, opting to take on working in intelligence and security as a desk job.

News of what happened on Dantooine hadn’t quite reached the Core just yet, mainly because it wasn’t a populous territory and it didn’t exist within one of the mainstream bodies of government. Trys was looking over some files from work when there was a knock on her door.

She ambled over to the door and opened it, her eyes widening in shock when she saw her son. More than the injuries, his eyes drew her attention the most. She hadn’t seen him look so broken and terrified in many years. Before he could even get any sentences out, Trys pulled him into a tight embrace, careful to avoid the injuries. In fact, the only other time she had seen him look like this was when he finally realized that his father truly wanted nothing to do with him. She pulled him inside and closed the door behind them.

“Shh,” She whispered softly as she held him tight, simply focusing on holding her son. Trys had a million questions, a thousand concerns, but all of that was muted for now. She embraced him just as tightly as she had when he came home from a rough day at school, when he had been in a fight, when he didn’t want to talk to her, when he hated her guts. She held him all the same. In that moment, that was all she did, no judgement, no words. She gave him all the space he needed to break down exactly how he wanted.

@Nefieslab

 

[Crix Aran]

More than anything what made him feel at home in this new apartment he had never really spent any time in was the scent of his mother when she pulled him close and held him to her. It felt more like he was home than any of the Temples ever had done and more than even some of those ratty apartments they had lived in together before the attacks on the Rangers. No, home was wherever he could rest his head on his mother's shoulder and let her hold him.

Where he could let himself just... stop.

Stop forcing himself to act like he had all the answers for his Padawan learners, stop acting like he had fully control of all of his emotions for the Masters and stop convincing himself that he needed to be strong and carry every burden he came across. That last one no one had asked him to ever pick up - he had picked it up himself for better or worse. And it was that trait, that most 'good' and 'righteous' of things that had him clutching to his mother as he sobbed into her shoulder.

Desperately clinging to her like he thought she would disappear because wasn't that just the way? People he had clung to, people he had built himself up in the image of were hurt and left him. His mother, Talak and Hannibal - all of them torn from him in one way or another and only his mother ever came back.

Because Hans brought her back and now?

He couldn't do the same.

"Mom I tried... I tried so hard but I couldn't..."

Crix forced himself to stop talking before he could start babbling, forced himself to take a deep breath and to remove his face from the crook of his mother's neck to look her in the eyes. She deserved to know what had happened. She had a right to know what had happened to the man who had helped her back from the pit of darkness she had been thrown into.

"Hans is dead." he managed to gasp out, his breath shuddering with the effort of holding in his tears, "The Sith came to Dantooine and we tried to stop them. I ah... I stopped one but it wasn't enough. They got him, mom. They got him and I couldn't..."

He swallowed thickly.

"I... I left him there mom... how could...? How could I leave him there?"

@Sreeya

 

[Trys Aran]

Trys stiffened as Crix revealed that Hans was dead. The words didn’t quite register, her eyes widening. She had received a message from him, but it made no sense at the time. Had he known? Why hadn’t he asked for help? Her blood felt as if it froze, ice running through her veins. She forgot how to breathe, her grip on Crix going slack for just a moment before she quickly snapped back to it. She couldn’t crack, not right now when he needed her.

“Hans would have wanted you out of there safely,” She said weakly, squeezing her eyes shut. She wanted to lecture Crix and scream at him for ever being in the presence of Sith. However, she knew they were well past that. Crix chose his path just as she had. She remembered the days when he told her not to leave, when he begged her to stay so the bad guys couldn’t get her. And she always went. She had no right to tell Crix not to go.

After a moment, she finally stepped back and eased Crix down into the couch, sitting down next to him.

“Your...padawan, is she all right?” Trys asked quietly. She knew he had taken one on even though the idea of it was absurd to her. Crix was still a baby himself in her eyes and had no business being responsible for someone else. She knew padawans often accompanied their masters into battles.

“How did Dantooine happen? No warning?”

@Nefieslab

 

[Crix Aran]

He knew how she felt.

Even if he had never trained that damned sixth sense until he realized it was the Force, he would have known how she felt because she was his mother. For so long it had just been the two of them and he had picked up so many of her mannerisms over the years that he could feel it even without looking her in the eyes. It felt like he had failed her, like his inability to save Hans from Raze was a failure that had directly hurt his mother and it ached.

Part of him wanted to bite back anyway - that Hannibal couldn't want anything because he was fucking dead - but he couldn't muster the anger anymore. He had been angry at Raze and he still was but it felt like to reach it he needed to wade through thick snow to get to it, numbed as he was by his pain.

"I'm going to hold a ceremony for him." he told her quietly, "And burn his ship... he might have wanted me to have it but it's his and it'll work I think. Kind of like some send off into space or something."

Because there definitely wasn't a body he could bury or burn.

His initial tears had dried up and the sheer presence of his mother soothed him in a way he couldn't quite explain but intimately understood. Because she was his mom - of course she calmed him down. At the mention of his Padawan, of Clove, he winced and leaned back, running a hand over his horns.

"Scarred and scared." he admitted, swallowing thickly as he did so, "We had so little warning but enough to start evacuating. I sent Clove to evacuate with the base staff while I drew attention at the main gate with some others. They... they flanked and she got hurt. One of the base staff dragged her onto a ship."

Now sat on the sofa, Crix couldn't help the way his left hand shook and he didn't even seem to notice it as he just kind of... stared into the middle distance.

"They put me in charge of her, Mom. You should see her - she's like a little china doll and they think I'm responsible enough to look after her?" he blinked rapidly, turning to stare at his mom with an expression based on a mixture of bewilderment and respect, "I'm... how did you do it mom? It's like half the time she's magnetically attracted to danger! How did you cope when that was me?"

@Sreeya

 

[Trys Aran]

Trys stayed silent as he spoke, but she never let go of him. Her arm remained around him, her hand rubbing up and down his back as she used to do when Crix quietly fell asleep against her as a child. It didn’t matter how much time they spent apart or how much he had grown up, there were subtleties that would always remain the same. Her gaze moved away to rest on the caf table as he spoke. There was a surge of anger as she thought about the Jedi’s lackluster defenses. They knew they were at war and at risk of attacks at any point, so why did they continue to get taken by surprise?

She didn’t focus too much on Hannibal for now. She would need to grieve on her own time. As her memories returned, Trys began to struggle with losing Talak long after he had gone. It was as if she experienced the horrible reality all over again, and it made her go numb. She couldn’t be that now when Crix was scared next to her.

Trys looked over at her son when he asked his question, a sad smile gracing her face then, “You never really learn to cope with it, kiddo,” She said softly, “All you can do is trust in what you’re teaching her and hope she learns from it. The more you try to control her, the worse it’ll be. You have to let her make her own mistakes just as I had to with you.”

She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him into another hug, though she shifted slightly, “Your horns are getting bigger,” Trys said with a soft chuckle, wincing as one poked against her skin, “You want me to order Poncho’s?” It was a local pizza joint that mother and son often enjoyed on movie or game nights...or when Trys attempted to cook a dinner and failed miserably.

@Nefieslab

 

[Crix Aran]

It was strange that it was both reassuring and not to learn that his mom still worried about him like he was worried about Clove. That it was a feeling that never went away even if it did lessen the more you got used to seeing them live their lives and grow. Either way, he leaned further into the hug without meaning to as he just let out a soft breath and nodded.

He could get that.

He could try to get it at least, for his mother's sake, for Clove's sake and for the sake of his own nerves. Crix had only ever worried about his mom as much as he worried about his Padawan. If he added to it, he was liable to end up with anxiety or something.

"Teenagers suck." he decided with a small groan, "Is it too late to apologize for all the shit I put you through? I feel like I have a new appreciation for it."

Sheepishly reaching up, he tapped the tip of one of his horns with a little chuckle. He had been meaning to file them down a little bit to be less threatening but he had kind of neglected that side of himself for awhile. It hadn't seemed that important recently.

"Think I could pull off the 'antler style' look yet?" he joked before laughing as he got a nostalgic smile on his face, "Poncho's still makes food? Hell if they haven't shut it down for health code violations then sign me up."

The tremor in his left hand subsided and Crix allowed himself a moment where he was just still and relaxed.

"I've missed this."

It was the little things that reminded Crix that although he lived with the Jedi, he was still at Home when he was with his mom.

@Sreeya