Hoth: Blood and Ice

[Tethys Carrack]

Tethys's brows twitch up a bit, though it may not be obvious under her cold-weather gear. "Perhaps she would. Not necessarily, if it's because of her." She can't really begin to guess the reactions of a fellow Jedi who has made such different choices from her own over the years.

"Val and Aral. All right." She pronounces them slowly and carefully--two more names added to her list of promises to keep. Tethys paces a few steps in the fresh snow, thinking. "Luth, you said that y... that Baras may suspect you've had a change of heart. Do you think it will still be possible to send your sons to House Thul if that happens? Once they, and you, are out of the Empire, I believe we can keep you all out of his hands. Protection of children and innocents is an essential duty, for both the Republic and the Jedi." With a resigned sigh, she adds, "And if you are serious about turning yourself in for investigation... then security will certainly not be a problem, for a time at least."

Of course, all that assumes they're able to get off this frozen rock ball and do something soon.

[Luth Khalan]

She smiled a little. It was a nice thought.

"He will come for me before security becomes an issue, I think. I'm currently the biggest danger to his legacy as he sees it," she stated. "... It actually might be better to make that confrontation sooner and on my own terms, when you put it like that. The scenario you describe means a lot of people potentially suffering to keep us safe."

"As for turning myself in... It's kind of a matter of whether it would do the most good to do so. It might just tear open old wounds this far on, rather than granting real closure."

[Tethys Carrack]

"If old wounds can be torn open, it often means they haven't closed cleanly." Tethys half-shrugs, lifting a hand. "Such wounds may not really heal until you've treated everything that has been festering out of sight. That is a problem for the future, though."

Her voice reflects the delicate mix of sympathy and tension at work in her mind at the moment. Tethys doesn't want to spook Luth with dire warnings of the hard road ahead. On the other hand, the search for a quicker and easier path--one that avoids hard truths, risk, and inner confrontation--so often leads in exactly the opposite direction from the new path Luth has told Tethys she wants to find.

Tethys rubs the bridge of her nose with gloved fingertips. "I think... I wouldn't over-estimate Baras's power in Republic space. No doubt his legend within the Empire is carefully cultivated, and perhaps he still has some of his agents, his assassins--as you and Layne both were at one time. But that's a crude instrument. And when we get off Hoth, he's going to have his hands full with Zakuul, and whatever effects the invasion has on his power. How stable will your Empire remain under a powerful outside threat? Your Darths will be tearing each other to pieces with their nails to make sure they're not the first one pushed outside the herd for the kath hounds to seize."

[Luth Khalan]

"Possibly." She could feel the old self-doubt crawling up her back again, trying to make depression start to spiral. Of course, once the thought pattern started, it inevitably came out in how she spoke.

"I already made that mistake once. There's a limit to even my stupidity. His network in Republic space is all but completely collapsed. I know it almost as well as he does by now. He has a few agents left, but I already know who they are. And you're right about that - he'll be busy. I don't have this overwhelming fear that his eyes are everywhere anymore, or we wouldn't be talking. If he survives it all, though, he'll put what he can toward coming for them. Besides, it would be difficult for the Republic to say no politically if he just came up and asked for them directly. What I'm proposing is technically parental kidnapping."

"Of course, that's assuming that any of this ends up being relevant in the face of the Eternal Empire. We may be setting it aside for awhile."

[Tethys Carrack]

"They have your name, Luth Khalan," Tethys points out, with a sudden warmth that borders on mirth. "Is 'Darth Baras' on their birth certificates? Do the Sith actually bother with such mundane formalities?" Suddenly the juxtaposition of the day-to-day concerns of parenthood with the dark and brooding public figure of DARTH BARAS is almost too much, and she feels the threat of a sudden attack of hilarity. "I suppose you could tell me he changed their dirty diapers and woke up twice every night to feed them, and it wouldn't be the most surprising thing I learned on this ball of ice. But it would be high on the list..."

Recovering herself a bit and clearing her throat, she says in a more sober tone, "If it came to that, I am confident your sons would have no lack of extremely capable diplomatic and legal representation. Two little boys whose mother never formally renounced her Republic citizenship, otherwise bound for a life of certain torment in their father's care?" She shakes her head, lips quirking again in spite of herself. "It could be the child custody scandal of the century, but only on the grounds of novelty. To a Republic court it would be open-and-shut."

[Luth Khalan]

That did disrupt it. She barked out a laugh. "Point taken." She shook her head. "Thank you. For the reassurance, I mean."

"I need to do my best to let go of that ground-in paranoia."

[Tethys Carrack]

"Yes," Tethys agrees, simply. "You do." But she smiles as she says it.

With a slightly weary sigh, she adds, "Some people mistake the Jedi preference for trust and good faith for... well, naivety. Or worse. You've been a Sith for years, so I suppose you've heard all of it." She shrugs.

"The truth is, we're not as stupid as some beings imagine us. Jedi are not blind optimists. We simply know that we can't allow fear to rule us. If we let it, fear for the future will lead us into the dark places just as fast as hate or cruelty. We have to learn to prepare for bad possibilities without letting them darken our vision and swallow up our spirits." Suddenly tired, she leans against her tauntaun, patting its malodorously fluffy side with a wry smile. "That takes a lot of work, though. In its own way."

[Luth Khalan]

"Faster, if anything," she agreed with a sigh. "It can feel so reasonable to believe your fears at the time. It's easier to recognize that you should have trusted people and had hope from the beginning after the fact."

"I've heard all the propaganda, but it's always been difficult for me to see the Jedi as weak. Being able to keep it together the way you do, and keeping that hope alive. Some days it's difficult for me to even get up in the morning, so it's hard not to admire."

[Tethys Carrack]

"The darkness.. builds on itself, doesn't it?" Tethys asks. This isn't a downhill road she's traveled herself--well, not all the way down, certainly--so that is a real question, outside the realm of her firsthand experience. It's an educated guess, though.

"There's quick power in fear, I've felt it myself. I suppose... one could become reliant on it. And then afraid of what would happen without the fear." She winces, brows drawing together.

"Turning away from it becomes easier too, though. That I know well enough. After the first... well, not the first one time. But eventually you can come to trust that even if you might fail without that easy power, it won't be the end. Especially if you're not alone." As often happens when she thinks about this lesson, the hot sun beating on the marketplace in Rygor dances before her eyes for a moment.

[Luth Khalan]

"Yes. It builds on itself. It builds until it feels like there was never a right path, because my existence itself was a mistake," she explained, as detached as she can managed. Just getting the honest words out sounds difficult. "I've heard people talk about anger and hate that come from fear, but not the spiral of hopelessness that settles into numb despair over time. The feeling that you're continuing to live without knowing why. There's no power in it. It just settles in and darkens everything else."

"Maybe it is anger and hate that just turns inward."

She shook her head. "I can't do much just yet, but... for now, I guess, I can try to recognize what's happening and try other ways of thinking. If it becomes easier over time, then practice seems like the answer."

[Tethys Carrack]

Tethys considers this for a bit with the seriousness it deserves. "I've begun to understand hatred as the final product of those basic dark emotions," she says, softly and deliberately. "Anger magnified by fear, fear feeding off anger. So even without another object... hating oneself is still hate."

She holds out a hand to Luth, palm-up. "Yes. That's a start. Thinking matters. Habits of action matter even more. When thought becomes action, that's when breaking the cycle of fear is most important, most valuable of all." Her lips quirk wryly. "It's not that Jedi don't ever feel these things, or that we never think about them. We train our instincts to turn away from fear, to be more trustworthy. But much of our training is also about leaving ourselves the space to understand and choose, at the point of action. To never lie to ourselves and say 'I had no choice' when the choice was in our hands." Her brows draw together a bit, and she admits, "I don't know if I am explaining this in a way that makes sense to someone who hasn't trained in the Order."

[Luth Khalan]

"Yes... I think that is true."

"I have a way forward, then. To make steps." She nodded to herself, then looked to Tethys. "Thank you. I'm feeling... hopeful. About all this."

[Tethys Carrack]

"Hold on to that." Tethys's smile is small but warm. "Hope is the enemy of darkness. And I'll be there, if you need... to talk. A reminder. A list of Republic-licensed family attorneys." Her lips quirk a bit more at that, then she sobers. "Or a lightsaber to guard your back, depending."

[Luth Khalan]

"Thank you." She took a deep breath and let out a short laugh. "I'll let you know which."

She hopped up onto the tauntaun. "Shall we head back?"

[Tethys Carrack]

"Probably best, yes." Tethys reaches up to grip the pommel of her tauntaun's saddle, then swings astride with reasonable facility considering she's not a regular rider of, well, anything really. "We wouldn't want someone thinking we fell victim to snow blindness and got lost out here," she adds wryly. "And we should report in on our patrol. No significant threats spotted." That last is very dry indeed. True and not true, depending on one's point of view.

True enough from the perspective of base security, though.

[Luth Khalan]

She nodded. "Fair enough. Let's go." She guided her tauntaun back toward the base along with Tethys.

/scene?

[Tethys Carrack]

/scene!

Fade to Tauntauns.