deercountry | (no subject)

Luke smiled gently; he wasn't sure if she had outright said as much -- too much had happened, and between the place itself messing with him, it was hard to keep track of everything -- but he had gotten the impression this wasn't her true form. It didn't bother him, and the soft shake of his head was his way of saying she didn't need to elaborate if she didn't want to.

"I know you're not," he said softly. "And even he may not, but he's a stubborn man that doesn't know when to give up. At all."

A bit of sourness may have crept into his voice at that last bit, but Airy probably wouldn't blame him for being annoyed with his father. The man had been miserable as he knew him, and attempted to make his life miserable as well, but not all of it had been his fault. There was the whole issue of Obi-Wan and Yoda not being honest with him from the start as to what happened to his father, and blaming his recklessness for leading to him not being ready for the burden of the truth.

But Airy didn't need all that dumped on her, so he held it back, instead gently stroking her cheek with his thumb.

"Let me talk to my father, when he recovers from his fall," he urged her gently. "I will do everything I can to get him to back off."

"Do you think he will?" she asked. "Recover, that is."

It was in her nature to expect the very best. To have a sunny and optimistic outlook. But she lacked the right information to truly understand the Force. And maybe she was also a little stubborn about it herself.

Which was entirely due to her inability to comprehend the things Obi-Wan Kenobi said about attachment. That just made no sense.

But as for Anakin, she certainly liked the idea of him getting better. Still, that wouldn't undo what had happened. Dean still had been traumatized. And she'd nearly gone off on a rampage of her own. Recovery would be...tricky.

Luke's gentle expression turned a little sad at that.

"I've already saved him from the Dark once," he said softly. "When the Emperor tried to kill me, the love he had for me brought him back. I know I can do the same again. I believe in the goodness in him, and I'm not going to give up on that."

He let out a faint laugh at that, shrugging his shoulders slightly, before letting them slump a little.

"I guess I'm as stubborn as he is," he continued. "But I know he can recover; I've seen him do it once, he can do it again, no matter how hard it will be."

And no matter how much he had to help him and his victims heal along the way.

Somehow, Luke believing it made Ariadne believe it too. She was sure that Obi-Wan wouldn't approve of 'love,' like that. But Alastrians? Alastrians were terribly fond of all three types of love. It was what held their society together. Or, at least, what did hold their society together once. Before they were hunted down and destroyed like animals.

"I believe you," she said.

And right then, of course, the tea kettle let out a piercing whistle, as if to remind them of its presence in the room. Smiling meekly, Ariadne turned to get it, but paused before she really stepped away from Luke.

She was Alastrian. Her entire soul was Alastrian, up to and including her deep belief in the power of love. She couldn't hide it from herself. So, she supposed, she couldn't hide it from him either. So she changed. Standing right there next to him.

It wasn't dramatic, exactly. More like waves of heat rising off of a warm pavement. The colors of her form rippled and changed, swirling like a wet water color. And when it stopped, Ariadne was in her natural form: Skin green as the underside of a maple leaf, hair blue like candy floss, her lips dark lavender.

Luke jumped slightly when the tea kettle went off, realizing he was just seconds away from doing something to help her that... probably would have been really stupid now that he was thinking on it. He flushed in embarrassment, though that quickly disappeared into a look of awe as she changed before him; he had never seen anything in the galaxy quite like her, yet still by other species standards she was almost... plain. More human-like despite the almost Twi'lek skin coloring than anything else.

She was still beautiful too.

He smiled warmly at her show of trust, letting his hand drop in favor of wrapping both of his around hers, giving them a squeeze, before letting go, allowing her to tend to the tea kettle.

"Where do you keep your cups?" he asked, moving to help.

She flushed slightly purple, but Luke's reaction was the best possible reaction she could have hoped for: Practically none.

Not that she'd doubted him. Everyone from that world seemed uninterested in her skin. But it was reassuring.

And it made her squeeze his hands in return. She would wait a while, before telling him just what that meant in her culture. No need to overwhelm the poor man.

"The cabinet behind the stove," she said, stepping back to go to the kettle. "I'm not sure I have two that match. Pick whichever ones you like." It hardly mattered.

Luke nodded at that, picking out two cups that didn't even come close to matching and setting them on the counter, before going to fish for some spoons and other things they would need.

"Anything else I can help with?"

Helping with Anakin was kind of what mattered. Even if she knew he meant in the kitchen. Ariadne shook her head. Her colors transformed again, going back to the way she usually was. And she picked up the tea kettle, bringing it over to the little table, where she knelt on the floor.

The Elves were a bit ceremonious about their tea, but she just poured it into the cups that Luke selected, setting the kettle down between them.

She was actually feeling a lot better. About a lot of things.

"I think," she said thoughtfully. "That it's long past time you told me another story. Maybe a cheery one?" She'd done enough crying for a good ten years.

Luke happily settled down, watching her work with a faint smile on his face. He glanced up at the suggestion of a story, before frowning to himself, stirring the tea as he tried to think of something cheerful that had happened in the last four years. There certainly hadn't been much, especially in the time between Bespin and the second Death Star.

"I could... tell you a story that ends hopefully, of how I ended up joining the Rebellion against the Empire," he began. "It take a long time to get there, though. Or, hm..."

He stuck his tongue in his cheek, trying to think. Cymoon had been dreadful, and his bumbling through Nal Hutta after that even worse.

"...or I could tell you about Han, and the time he gambled away our funds for the Rebellion?" he added. "That... ends kind of embarrassingly, though."

He paused again, frowning to himself. "...I don't think you want to hear about me getting conned into being a snack for an alien hive queen, even if that does have a happy ending."

She tried. She tried so, so hard. But in the end, she couldn't stop herself. She laughed. Not out of cruel intent, of course. It was only that they'd just gone on an emotional ride. And somehow, she hadn't expected to end up talking about Luke as some kind of 'snack.'

Weakly, she nodded, trying to cover her mouth with her fingers. "Oh, I think I kind of do want to hear about it," she said.

Her eyes glimmered like coins in a fountain.

Luke smiled slightly at that, happy to hear her laugh, even if it was at his expense. He leaned forward slightly, as if to draw in the fact that this was a for real story, and not anything he made up... because honestly, he was still trying to figure out everything that had happened during all of this, and if they hadn't collectively hallucinated the whole thing.

"So, there was an archeologist that used to be contracted out to my father -- her name is Doctor Aphra, and she's still alive, last I checked," he began. "After she split from my father, she got in contact with me. She had a crystal that had the consciousness of an ancient Jedi inside, and said she knew someone that would be able to unlock it and allow me to use it."

He paused, making a face at himself. "I was desperate for a teacher; Obi-Wan had died a year ago, and my efforts to try and find relics of the past and teach myself were only marginally successful. Learning from an ancient Jedi sounded like it was the best thing I could ever hope for, so I accepted."

Reasonable enough. Ariadne nodded. "I would have done the same thing, if someone offered me an Alastrian relic." No matter who they might have been aligned with. But she decided to ignore that part, because Anakin had already interfered enough with her day. She needed space from him and his horrible shadow.

She took a small sip of her tea, settling down, tucking her feet under her.

"I take it things did not go according to plan?"

"Oh, they went according to plan, just not my understanding of the plan," Luke replied, that sourness creeping into his voice again. "We needed to go to this place called Ktath’atn; the queen there only saw people once every year, to see if people could please her interest with something new and exciting -- Aphra put it she was 'very old and very bored'. Considering how scarce Jedi had become, she thought presenting me would get an audience with the queen."

He made a face; now that he was saying it out loud, he was seeing all the red flags that he should have back then. Hindsight and all that.

"It was the first time I had ever worn a suit, and even then, Aphra presented me as 'a farmboy from Tatooine' just because she knew it would get a rise out of people and lead to me demonstrating my abilities in order to protect us, even if it was by accident. It worked way too well; everyone was immediately dismissed except for the two of us."

She reached across the table, absently touching the back of his hand. "Well, I know what it's like to be a curiosity," she said. Alastrians were probably as rare in her world as Jedi were in his. "That's never very fun."

Although, having seen him in a suit, she thought he would dazzle any crowd.

And he just smelled so good.

"So once you were alone with her?"

"That didn't come until later," Luke replied. "We had breakfast with the queen the next morning, where I found out the intent of my being shown off was to be kept as a pet."

Again, he made a face at that. He really should have gotten up and walked out then and there.

"The queen tried to get me to demonstrate my powers again, to make sure last night wasn't a fluke. I was supposed to lift the lid off of a dinner plate, but the Force was not cooperating with me -- I didn't have the training to realize it then, but it was because there was something highly dangerous under that plate. Fortunately, Aphra realized what was going on and set off a small detonation, and we ran for it.

"I've told you before there are all manner of strange things in my galaxy, but what was under that lid took the cake. It was a parasite -- a highly dangerous parasite that completely takes over its host called an Abersyn Symbiote."

Well, at least he would be a very cute pet.

"A parasite," she said, her eyes widening slightly. Although the name itself meant nothing to her, there were plenty of horrifying stories about parasites back in Valeria. And she was relatively sure she knew what a 'symbiote' was, in the most general sense.

Although she didn't know they liked to steal cake. She would have to ask him about that later.

Ariadne loved cake.

"I'm glad Aphra was there to protect you!"

Luke nodded at that, grinning slightly at her reaction.

"To give you an idea about how dangerous Abersyn Symbiotes are, both the Old Republic and the Empire's response to reports of their appearance is to bomb the location from orbit and hope it's enough," he continued. "The queen and everyone in her Citadel -- it was one massive hive of them that had gone unchecked for decades, maybe even a century. Not only had it developed into an advanced hive mind, but the queen had also found a way to grow more, without the need to kill the host in order to breed."

A frustrated breath escaped from him, and he paused a moment to sip at his tea, trying not to make a face at the memory of what came next.

"Also, don't be so quick to give Aphra credit," he continued. "Oh, she helped me escape at first, but that was only because she could have been taken over by a symbiote in that moment too. Once she had enough leverage to get the queen to do what she wanted, she handed me right over."

Ariadne made a face, immediately disappointed in this stranger she'd never met. "She did?" It was sometimes very difficult to believe the best in people, when they did such selfish things.

Obviously, whatever it was hadn't worked out in the doctor's favor. After all, Luke was sitting there now, drinking tea with her.

Still. What was the phrase Dean had once used?

"That's...not cold."

...she hoped she'd gotten it right. Maybe it was supposed to be cool?

Luke tilted his head in confusion, not sure what that phrase was supposed to mean. He shrugged it off after a moment -- different worlds had different saying after all, and he was pretty sure it was a comment on how it wasn't very nice of Aphra to do that to him. Which, yeah, it definitely was not "cold".

"Well, it was worse," Luke replied. "By the time that happened, my friends had appeared as well. Han got captured along with me, and I got to watch as he was implanted with a symbiote and forced to join the queen's guard."

He let out a breath; he had the unfortunate opportunity to hear his friends scream in pain a lot over the years, and that especially hadn't been fun.

"The queen had a different plan for me, though; apparently the 'essence' of a Force sensitive is practically a drug for Abersyn Symbiotes. She was... essentially eating my soul, I guess? It's hard to describe what she was doing, outside of the fact that it hurt."

His friend Han seemed to get in an awful lot of trouble. Perhaps he was the Dean of Luke's universe.

Didn't matter.

Ariadne's forehead crinkled in concern as she listened, her fingers growing a little tense. It sounded truly awful. There was no feeling worse than feeling helpless. Listening to suffering.

Poor Luke.

And then the idea of his soul being disturbed. Well, that hit close to home, in light of all of the chaos that the Winchesters had brought into her life. "Oh, Luke," she said softly. "That's...a nightmare."

"It wasn't fun," Luke admitted, as if that had been the least of the things he had endured in his life. Which... as much as he hated to think about it, it kind of was.

"I didn't know how we were going to get out of that one, but then Aphra snuck back in," he continued. "She explained to me how the hive worked, and... well, basically, the strongest person in the hive controls the hive. If I let a symbiote infect me, I could interrupt the queen's control.

"So that's what I did."

"Because you were the strongest."

Which probably had more to do with the Force than with Luke as an individual. But all the same, she gave him a proud, little smile. As if to say, 'but of course.'

She gave the back of his hand another light tap, before picking up her tea again.

"It's a little hard to figure out that Aphra, though. In the end what, exactly, did she want out of all of this?"

"She wanted that Jedi consciousness unlocked, though I'm not sure what for," he replied, frowning slightly. "I remember a report of a massive underworld gathering for some weapon, but nothing came of it that I remember. Either way, I got to see first hand what that 'Jedi' was like."

He shook his head. "I managed to freeze the queen, trying to take over the hive, but I was trying to keep my own consciousness separate, maintain my own sense of self. That consciousness intervened, showing me how I could take control of the symbiote, and with its emotional drive and control, make myself the most powerful Jedi that ever existed.

"But I didn't do that. I killed it instead, and I killed the queen as well."

It wasn't exactly a happy ending. Ariadne didn't like any confrontation that ended with death, especially the kind where there was no coming back. Still, she was relieved on Luke's behalf. It sounded like quite a lot.

"Well," she said, taking a sip of her tea. "What about your friend? The one who's always getting into trouble. You were able to rescue him, right?"

The Dean of his universe.

Luke grinned at that.

"The strongest in the hive controls the hive," he replied. "With me destroying my symbiote and the queen dead, that left Han in control. He ordered everyone to, as he put it, 'quit these people,' and that disrupted all the symbiotes, destroying them and freeing an entire planet of people."

He let out a faint laugh, taking a sip of tea.

"His inability to commit to anything at the time saved us all."