[July catchall] There's no safe place, no sanctuary

[ezra_of_lothal]

Who: Ezra Bridger ezra_of_lothal and you!
What: a july catch-all with various semi-open starts
When: Post-boatgate, mid Chara's rampage, and the rest of the month
Where:  Centered around Cassandra, but could be anywhere 

Content Warnings: Violent death, grief, hauntings. May be updated here and have cws in thread subject lines

Comments

[terriblepurpose]

Paul presses the point of the shell into his thumb, schooling his expression to impassivity.

"You're a ghost," he says, like it's the most natural thing in the world, "I didn't realize."

"...are you..." Paul shakes his head. "No. I don't imagine you are all right."

[ezra_of_lothal]

"Uh. No, I guess I can't say that I am ok," Ezra admits, reluctantly. "But, hey, lack of a physical body seems to make emotions a little quieter, so I'm not really freaking out that badly, either?"

[terriblepurpose]

"Is that so?" Paul's curiosity is more than abstract. He's concerned about Ezra, in light of the disruptions that have afflicted the cycle of life and death here, but he also has his own situation to consider.

But that aside: "Have you been able to talk to any of your fellow Jedi, yet?"

[ezra_of_lothal]

"Not...exactly, not yet." He would sigh, if he could - or well, his image makes a motion like a sigh anyway.

"I've been having trouble staying, um, in one spot." He offers a tight smile. "So if I disappear on you, I can pretty much promise it'd not by choice."

[terriblepurpose]

"I won't hold it against you."

It says something that this is a conversation that barely fazes him. He doesn't know precisely what, but he suspects it to be not entirely benign.

"Is there anything you want me to pass on for you? Or to do on your behalf?" He presses up to standing, still fiddling with the fragment in his hands, more of a nervous tic than he realizes.

[ezra_of_lothal]

Ezra is quiet for a moment.

"I know Sahar took my lightsaber to Master Kenobi." As he would have wanted, and once asked Paul to make sure happened if he fell in battle against the Leviathan.

"Do you....know Ariadne? Or Tory?"

[terriblepurpose]

"Tory of Cobra Kai?" Paul knows the other students of the dojo, however loosely associated with it they are.

"I would be able to get her a message, or anything else you want." He nods, already accepting the charge of responsibility.

(The thought of someone being delivered Ezra's weapon after he fell to some fate - that Paul still has to ask about - twists in his chest, but he keeps that still unspoken.)

[ezra_of_lothal]

"Yeah, Tory takes lessons at Cobra Kai," he confirms with a nod. Which...he doesn't really get, honestly, given how questionable Mr. Lawrence's emotional control seems to be, but she seems to have found her own balance, and he admires that about her. Who is he to really judge, if it works for her?

"And Ariadne owns Serenity Gardens in Willful Machine. If you could get a message to either or both of them that...I'm not exactly ok, but I'm not gone? Neither of them have any abilities I know of that would make it easier to notice me, like this. And that - that I'll do my best to get back properly."

[terriblepurpose]

"I'll do that." Paul has been able to find people on much scanter information than that. He palms the shell fragment, finally done fiddling with it, and tilts his head slightly to the side.

"That's all?" He manages to suggest, with the raise of eyebrows and particular inflection of the question, that it's all right for Ezra to ask for more, if there is more to be asked.

[ezra_of_lothal]

"Thanks," he says, his relief obvious on his face and radiating around him.

"And - the orphanage, if you don't mind. Everything is so informal there, and Koz is uh - Koz. I'm not sure who to tell. I don't want the kids I do stuff with to think I ditched them." He mulls it over. "Abigail. Or David. They're twins, about 13? Pretty level headed for their age. You could tell them what's up, without getting mobbed."

[terriblepurpose]

Now Paul is breaking the news of a death to orphans. His face hardly betrays his dismay, but Ezra is used to dealing with people who have trained themselves to serenity. The tremor at the corners of his eyes are a tell even he doesn’t quite manage to hide.

“…what should I tell them, if they ask what happened to you?” They’re practically Falco’s age. Old enough to understand a lot of things, too young to be asked to.

[ezra_of_lothal]

That tremor in Paul's expression - in the Force - makes him pause.

"That's...a good question." He glances out over the ocean. "I had to grow up so fast. Only ever wanted the truth, not matter how hard it was. When I finally found out what happened to my parents, I practically demanded to know-"

But Luke's talked about not being ready to hear about his father. Ariande said something about not wanting to know everything about how her family died.

Not everyone is wired like that, apparently.

He shifts uncomfortably. "But I do stuff with the kids because I don't want them to have to have it so hard."

[terriblepurpose]

Paul thinks of Falco again, and then, as far from that kind, affectionate boy as a black hole is from a star (born of the same stuff, points on a continuum) he thinks of Chara.

“I know what you mean.” He wishes he hadn’t palmed the shell. He wishes he hadn’t done a lot of things, but if wishes were fishes we’d all casts nets, or so the saying goes on Caladan.

“I can think of a way to put it. Not a lie, but not harsh.” He pauses there, could stop, but: “Did you ever find out what you wanted to know?”

[ezra_of_lothal]

He nods. "Ryder - an old comrade of theirs - told me straight. They heard a message I'd sent out speaking against the Empire-" The image of him shifts, like he's trying to take the sort of deep breath that he so often used to calm himself, in a living body.

Now he tries to reach for more of the Force to flow through him, instead.

"Like the message they'd sent out, when I was little. That the Empire took them away for making. Somehow a recording got passed around the Imperial prison they were in. They could tell it was me. And then they planned a prisoner break. Ryder and some of the other political prisoners got out. But they died."

[terriblepurpose]

It's always Empires. Paul, who has already begun to despair of them, watches Ezra not-breathe, and holds his tongue.

"I'm sorry," he says, simply, but there's an empathy there that doesn't quite avoid the brush of knowledge through it. Paul glances down at the tidepool, where strangely shaped crabs scuttle over sand, stopping here and there to sift for morsels of debris left behind by the storm.

He doesn't say they were brave, or died well. (That's never changed anything for him.)

"Did knowing help?"

[ezra_of_lothal]

"In a way. It didn't make the pain less. But it gave it...a kind of clarity. Something to grapple with, as I cried. As I-"

He sighes, or at least, makes that motion. "Continue on the process of letting go."

[terriblepurpose]

It's odd, watching a body without weight move as if it has flesh and breath. The memory of the self imprinted on the soul, more indelible that life itself, and even now Paul wonders-

He stops himself from wondering. That's not a path he will follow further, and he has enough clarity to know it is a distraction he sets himself to avoid the gut-clench of Ezra admitting so openly to tears. It reminds him of someone he wishes he was not reminded of.

"It was only one thing," he says, quietly, "Not all the things you could imagine. However bad it was, at least you knew what it had been."

[ezra_of_lothal]

Ezra has little shame about openly expressing grief. Perhaps he's lucky - very lucky. Most of the adults whose opinion's he ever truly cared about, even if they struggled with their own emotions, they rarely had issue with simply holding him as emotions tore through him.

Hera. Kanan. Zeb. Here, Vyng and Obi-wan, even.

"It's easy to get up in imagining all the possibilities. Letting the thoughts spiral. Knowing the facts can...contain that, somewhat, yes." He shrugs. "For me, at least."

[terriblepurpose]

The people that Paul has met here in this world who have been the kindest, the ones who have gotten closest to him, have all shared in an honesty he tells himself is rare in his own world. But when he thinks about it - when he lets himself think about it - that isn't entirely true. There were people who understood him, who knew how to reach across the gap between him and the rest of the world.

He sweeps the thought away like sand from a stone. Ezra is right about spirals.

"So at least they'll know where you are," he says, returning to the present, away from the shadows of a past yet unresolved, "Until you make your way back, in the flesh." A beat. "Which you will. I'm certain of it. When all this is over."