Genesis

[Horizon]

The echoes of Garreth's boots thudding against the marble floor droned on for what seemed like an eternity as he stopped to observe the duration of his own sound. Not a soul but himself traversed this lonely great hall. Its history was something of a secretive nature, in fact, gaining entry was not even permitted to those below that of a master's ranking. However, it had always been difficult for Garreth to obey the orders of those above him.

Even more so once he joined the order.

Thud after thud, he pressed further on. The occasional beam of light shining through the ceiling to give the bare minimum for lighting in these parts of the temple. The lone knight took a moment to stretch out his newfound prosthetic limb against the light, its form a shadow of what once was. His robes were a pristine white, almost heavenly in appearance as his robotics casted a complete and uttered contrast.

Blackened in their entirety.

It was there within the light that Garreth stood basking in its warmth for a moment. The sun's rays reaching down and providing a thoughtful time where his mind wandered backwards in time. Just as the memories came into view, he shook himself angrily as his right hand nearly tried to tear at the metal that now obscured his face. Dropping to his knees and roaring like that of a wretched beast, the pain was all too much.

He had only been released a week ago from recovery. Told time and time again to not touch the cybernetics on his face. The concern was that they would not meld properly with the flesh. Secretly he scorned the doctors, the nurses, the healers and everyone else who tried to help.

It was irrational to feel this way and Garreth knew it.

Surrounding him in this great hall was the monuments and statues of Jedi who had long past. Their deeds remembered forever and cast in stone. Their species ranged from the ever so common human, kel-dorian, wookie and so forth. It was here that the damaged knight would find his refuge away from the rest of the flock. Every time Garreth passed by his brothers and sisters, he could feel their gazes. While it was mostly pity, there was a sense of shame in what he had been given by the sith. This was their branding. A mark in which he would forever remember the battle of felucia and how he was..

"Who goes there?"

Garreth raised himself to his feet, his posture alert and seemingly on the offense. The question was posed with alarm, his tone clearly indicating a bit of anger. He had never seen another soul down here before. Not even the masters. His solitude had been interrupted.

 

[Lux]

Gently, fingertips dragged against stone, felt the curves and angles of seemingly ancient statues dedicated to those who had long since passed. The shapes and faces were immaterial: Lux didn't care to learn their names, didn't bother to listen to the stories of their lives. They were dead, after all - what did their deeds matter to those who lived?

In a time of war, the simple act of breathing was a luxury. Garreth himself was proof of that, a testament to the fickle nature of fate, of the whims of chance - and the kind of fortuitous timing that only one attuned to the Force could boast. It seemed so improbable that they had been able to bring him back from the brink, and yet, there he was: alert, ready to start a fight, as though they both weren't standing on hallowed ground. Lux showed herself without hesitation, a slim figure emerging from the shadows as though darkness could coalesce into something more than the sum of its parts.

Arms spread wide, revealing the same robed attire and relative harmlessness of a fellow Jedi, she didn't so much smile at him as she did tilt her head to the side, gaze curious, lacking in the pity that others had been so keen to fix him with. A hint of a grin tugged the edge of her lips upward, but it was without malice; for all their differences she was pleased to see him again, to see that he was mostly whole, that the operations had been successful. If she found his masked visage alarming, it didn't show - but then again, few were as adept at disguising their true intentions as one who made a living on the edge of a blade. Formerly.

"It's me," she said plainly, amused at the aggressiveness of his demeanor.

A moment later, the subtle smile dropped. Concern took its place, thinly veiled, easy to find in the edges of her eyes. "You've been a ghost, Garreth."

 

[Horizon]

"I feel like a ghost, Lux."

The words were filtered through his mask and were projected as partly human and partly robotic. His voice was still yet strained and it was entirely noticeable. But Garreth's demeanor made a noticeable shift that he was unwilling to hide from the woman before him at the least. Her usual nature was prevalent and he did not sense mockery like the days gone by during their youth spent together.

His fists had unclenched themselves and the violent glare had ceased to exist. A new expression had taken over what was left of the visage that looked upon her. One of curiosity, however distant it might be. Garreth took a moment to seat himself beneath one of the statues within the hall, its solemn expression casted downwards with an unactivated lightsaber in one hand and a tome in the other.

"Why did you come?"

The question hung in the air like the very dust that wavered between the two of them within this space and drifted delicately through the light.

 

[Lux]

"Well, you're not."

The statement was abrupt, spoken plainly. She didn't deign to pity him, nor did she endeavor to mock his pain. Honesty was difficult to deal with, certainly - but what did either of them have to gain from a stilled tongue? "You're alive, like it or not."

There were few certainties in the galaxy, and death was one of them. The abundance of ghost stories - baleful tales of Force-formed wraiths haunting wayward Jedi and Sith alike - made it clear that the one wish of the departed was to be alive again, with envious spirits seeking out clumsy vessels that they might live. Perhaps it was easy to suggest that dying was an easy way out, a fate unbecoming of one who wasn't an abject coward, given that her own body currently stood intact. Whole. Unaugmented, unlike that of the man who stood before her.

To Lux, pain of being torn apart and put back together again was unfathomable. And more importantly, it seemed like a shallow exercise to even try and understand the depths of his misery.

For a moment, her gaze shifted. Flickered downward, accompanied by a small shrug, momentarily helpless. There was no answer to his question, not one that came easily enough for the conversation at hand, not in the middle of some ridiculous mausoleum of dead warriors.

"I don't know." She paused, frowning. Excuses didn't become her, but it still felt wrong to come up empty to such a straightforward question. "It felt like the right thing to do."

 

[Horizon]

Silence cut straight through the air the way the sith cleaved down his shoulder on that fateful day. Even the light began to fade as the clouds forbid the sun to be present. It was to give the broken knight a moment from the light. To excuse himself from its eternal grace.

Garreth picked himself up from the foot of the statue and stood quietly, staring down at his own feet briefly. His prosthetic came into clear view, yet it was not his own design for this to be. A fist came raised and his absent eye mournfully gazed upon a phantom. What was once there. His flesh and blood that belong right where it should be. But the limb moved again once more on its own and slowly expanded to reveal the skeletal robotics that truly existed.

The husk shambled himself across the hall as the clouds darkened ever more. With nearly a foot between them, Garreth said nothing. He stared at her as the tears began to swell, forcing themselves outward as the breathing through his mask became ragged and out of control. Suddenly he gripped her with uncalculated strength and hung his head as he slowly slid to his knees onto the marble floor. The silent statues watched over as the broken knight began to sob uncontrollably. His mechanical hand gripped at her robe, accidentally tearing it with unmonitored strength through the prosthetic just before he stopped to grip her legs for support. Rib cage seizing over and over with shallow breaths pounding in and out of his lungs.

 

[Lux]

It felt cruel to watch him, to so plainly witness his struggle the way one might gawk at a speeder crash. But Lux struggled to turn away, unable to deny her own curiosity, bright eyes transfixed on the scene that seemed to play out in slow motion. On some level, she anticipated what transpired - perhaps it was the whisperings of the Force, or some kind of instinct - but the weight of his embrace still took her by surprise, body tense as he wrapped his limbs, artificial and otherwise, around her form.

For all the lessons of togetherness, of community and of brotherhood, Lux was an island: she kept to herself, convinced that anything the Jedi could do as a pair, she could accomplish on her own. It was self-defense, pure and simple. A barrier to protect her own feelings, to keep her from feeling the deep stings of rejection and disappointment, as inevitable as they were. She couldn't remember the last time anyone had dared to touch her - let alone the last time she had seen someone be so willingly open as to cry.

Deep down, it was terrifying. Silently, he entrusted her with his vulnerability - and Lux truly had no idea what to do with it.

For once, she let go. Loosed a sigh, acted on instinct, let anxieties unravel as she slipped down at his insistent grip. Her knees met the floor as her arms circled his shoulders, drawing him closer, inviting him into an embrace that, at least momentarily, felt a bit awkward. It took some time to negotiate the positions of legs and arms, but comfort followed as her muscles slackened, acquiescing to the notion that physical contact wasn't such a bad thing, after all.

The prosthetics, the torn robe - they didn't bother her so much as the sobbing did. It was as though someone had slipped a hand between her ribs, dug their fingers into her heart, and pulled. They had never been friends, not in any meaningful way, but he was still a Jedi. There was still a kinship, tenuous as anything else in the galaxy, and it was hard to deny the suffering that seemed to bleed out into the Force itself.

Silently, she ran her fingers over his cheek, pushed through the short fuzz of hair that remained on his head. The affection was brief - her mother had never dared to treat her so kindly; it wasn't as though she had any example to pull from - but her touch didn't shy away from the edges of his mask, nor did she hesitate to rest her chin atop his head, drawing him closer against her form.

 

[Horizon]

Garreth was drawn in without resistance. The two of them took a moment to meld together so seamlessly by this point that they came together like water. The force was known to work itself in mysterious ways. For years they had been apart and at an arms distance, but with appropriate loss, it is known for people to come together. Garreth had spent most of his life fighting through the tyranny of others simply by living and keeping his composure, but now all was lost.

"W-we were r-ran down li-like dogs, Lux. No training could have ever prepared us for what they did. I watched as our brothers and sisters were held down in the mud and tortured. Th-They would use us as bait to find the others. Make anyone they caught to scream out in the night and we'd go.. Only to get butchered."

The grip had tightened as the memories raged down on him like a dam that could no longer brace against the cumbersome tide. The deep sadness that Garreth had slipped away into was that of an ocean that he had found himself drowning within. There was no measurable escape, save for the life line that had been years in the making. Today he would take hold and find safe harbor in that which he was so unsure of in his youth. Damage had been done. A wound was struck deeper than flesh and his psyche. The force had felt it on that fateful day the battle of felucia took place. Now Garreth carried it with him. And for a time they sat silently together in the dark as they weathered the storm. Together.

Pulling himself from her chest with gentle ease, he looked at the dampness of her robes and felt sorry, but merely laughed.

"Don't tell anyone about this, it would ruin my image. I'm a bit stoic around here, y'know?"

The clouds above the temple were satisfied and parted way as the light found its way back to Lux and Garreth, shining justly on the two.

 

[Lux]

There was nothing to say. Lux found it strange enough that anyone could find solace in her arms - that her hands, crude tools that spilled blood more than they banished tears, could offer anything remotely close to comfort. But there was nothing to do other than hold him, to draw him against the warmth of her frame in the hopes that soft, steady breathing and quiet camaraderie could somehow soothe his wounds. It was naive to think a hug could change things, but she knew well enough the pain of being utterly alone, and in some sense, having him close helped etch away at the sadness mounting in the pit of her stomach, as though despair was truly a contagious thing.

I'm sorry, she wanted to say, but the words felt hollow. So instead she remained silent, only managing a ghost of a smile as his demeanor shifted. It was a good act, a clever coverup for the torrent of emotions that stirred beneath his laughing veneer, and Lux was keen to let him have it. There was no point in salting the wound; if he wanted to shrug it off, his confession over, that was his business. Not hers.

Eventually, she managed a smirk. Squinting in the sudden sunbeam, she shook her head and rose to her feet, a helping hand offered regardless of whether or not he planned to take it.

"Don't be stupid," she chided, more playful than cutting. "Who would I tell?"

No one would believe her, anyway.