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Entry tags:

(no subject)

Who: Ezra + Obi-wan. Ezra+Michael, Ezra+Ariadne
What: closed prompt in comments.
When: Evening of 2/25, and also general end of the month
Where: Obi-wan's house in Cassandra, Michael's shop, Rooftops of Trench

Content Warnings: Blood, offscreen deaths, aftermath of mass battle, grief, some corruption, others in tags

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"It is," he agrees, brightly.

"I am, thanks. I'm, hmm, naturally an empath - Jedi usually are a little. But now I'm a Paleblood, too, and I guess that dialed it all up a notch or so. Feeling, oh, everything is pretty headache inducing, it turns out. Took me a bit to get used to it."

"Oh! Yeah, humans and their auras." Michael's accustomed to that sort of thing. In all honesty, he tends to tune it out these days. "There's a lot of stuff like that going on around here. I'm not bothering you, am I?"

He's aware, naturally, of his own general aura. It'd be a lot worse if he weren't largely contained in his suit, but he's sure he could be doing a little better. Invisibly, he shifts, tucking more of his flames back inside.

"No, no you're, uh noticeable, sure, but you're not bothering me," Ezra rushes to reassure. "Although I always appreciate the consideration."

Seriously, that little bit of 'tidying up' makes him inclined to like Michael even more.

"Can I...ask what you are?" he adds, more hesitantly.

"Ah, yeah, I bet." Michael winces a little, but that tidying up was about as much as he could do. The suits aren't designed to completely conceal an immortal's true nature, from those who have the capacity to sense that sort of thing. There wasn't any real need.

Hopefully it's fine, anyway. At least he's not actively projecting anything - man, it's lucky Ezra wasn't around when he went all amnesia-squid earlier.

"I'm a demon," he answers without hesitation. It's not any sort of secret. "Do they have those, in your world?"

He doesn't know what he was expecting, but that wasn't it. He goes still and blinks once. Processes.

"I think there's some religions in my home galaxy with the basic idea, yeah, if there's anything in Jedi lore about...them, I haven't come across it. But I've got a lot of Earth stuff that was magically dumped in my head, too."

He pauses. "What do you mean by demon?"

"The Earth stuff is probably...roughly applicable," Michael admits. "It's sort of left-of-center, but close enough to get the general idea. Evil immortal afterlife beings from the dawn of time, run around doing a lot of spooky stuff. Wooo~"

He waves his hands in a sarcastic gesture.

"I wouldn't worry about religion, though, I've never run into one that's right about that stuff."

"Ok. I'd picked up that you're really old." He hesitates.

"So you're...from a version of an afterlife for other beings?"

"Yeah." Michael shrugs. "It's not weird, though."

Right? He figures it isn't weird unless you make it weird. It's hardly as though he's got any jurisdiction over - or even particular knowledge of - the afterlives of anybody else here.

"Just how things ended up, I guess. If you ask me, we haven't got any real right or qualifications to it - it just happened."

"No, not weird," the teenager agrees. "Just new to me. Although I guess you're not the first ancient being I'm met with some sort of cosmic role that just is."

"Oh, yeah? How's that?"

Michael doesn't...tend to agree with a lot of other immortals about a lot of things, but he's always curious about them! Good to know what you're dealing with, if nothing else.

"He called himself Bendu, and he just sort of....there on this planet we were using for a base. Bendu told Kanan - that was my master, my teacher - that he was 'the one in the middle'. Between Light and Dark, I guess. And his Thing certainly seemed to be what he considered balance. Internal - he helped Kanan figure out how to deal with being blinded. And between people. Kanan and I hadn't been, uh communicating well, since his injury. And Bendu helped with that in a weird way, too."

He shrugs. "But then he also got really mad at Kanan when our enemies found us. Blames us for disturbing his rest and thoughts, I guess."

"Mmmh. I get bored pretty easily, alone like that." Michael shrugs, non-committal. To each their own, he guesses, but who wants to just hang out on a planet on their own forever? Or even for a century?

"We've got plenty of neutral beings, too. They're mostly just boring. No emotions or anything, lots of numbers." He's talking idly. The Accountants and Neutral Janets aren't of great interest. "Here, how do we feel about this?" He flips the notebook to show a picture, just sketched. The tunic isn't entirely in the style of Obi-Wan - it's a little more visually interesting than that - and in emerald green for right now.

"That looks good," Ezra says with a nod, and glancing to give Michael a smile.

"And if you want to get creative, I know I saw at the temple that pattern or embroidery in the tabards that go over the tunic, that was a thing."

"Oooh, that sounds fun! What sort of patterns - like, just geometric, or...?"

He takes the sketchpad back; he's definitely gonna spice up at least a few of these, now that he's been given license. Maybe just a few, so Ezra can have something fancy and something casual.

"Well, it was up to the individual Jedi, it seemed like. Coming from their birth culture's sometimes. There's some patterns that are traditional on my home world, that I could sketch out. There's probably stuff from here that means things, too."

"Oh! Yeah, yeah, sure!" Michael lights up, immediately sliding the pencil and notepad over to Ezra. There's plenty of space in the margins, and more blank pages there if needed. "Humans care a lot about things like that, right? Demon culture's not super strong - not like that, anyway - but I've talked to a lot of people."

Ezra tilts his head in puzzlement, before he picks up the pencil and starts drawing. "Do demons not usually do much art?"

He sketches out patterns of lines and circles that can be found in various parts of Lothal, although he doesn't try to do the stylized animals. Just the abstract bits he remembers.

"Oh, no, it's really not done. There's a lot of reasons, probably." Vulnerability, for sure - it's dangerous to put yourself out there in front of demons, and art necessarily involves doing that. Plus, Michael just...doesn't think any of them really know how to be creative?

He leans forward, watching Ezra sketch. "I had to work for thousands of years before I got important enough to be able to squeeze some in. And even then, I had to pretend it wasn't for that." The Good Place was very fun to design! He got a lot of stuff in under the guise of "it's for an elaborate torture scheme", honestly.

He pauses, and glances up. "So there's definitely some nice things about being here, for you, huh?"

Michael shrugs. This place may not be bad by his standards, at least not all of the time, but he's not sure he'd go quite that far. "I haven't lived among other demons for a few centuries. I was actually doing alright, back at home. Mostly just me and my friends, and a bunch of other humans."

[Well now he feels like he's stuck his foot in it, and winces.]

Sorry, shouldn't have assumed.

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