Jaina Solo Fel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
solo_sword) wrote2012-06-22 02:59 pm
solo_sword) wrote2012-06-22 02:59 pm
Entry tags:
Mandalore- Friday Fandom time
By the end of her time on Mandalore, Jaina was feeling more confident in her abilities, but she still needed some additional perspective. From the second Jaina approached Gotab at Mirta's wedding saying she wanted to talk to him, he had to know why, but he waited till they got outside and found a quiet spot overlooking the valley before he spoke.
"I knew you couldn't leave it alone."
Jaina smiled wryly as she helped the old man sit on an outcrop of granite. "I need guidance."
"Fett's still too busy... discussing vital commercial issues with Admiral Daala, then," he assumed.
She shook her head. First... she was not happy about her and Fett working together, but at the moment there was nothing she could do about it. Second, she'd needed Fett to teach her a thing or four about dealing with total bastards who played dirty. She didn't need his guidance on this matter. "It's not Fett's experience I need. It's yours. I need to hear this from a Jedi."
Mandalore had thrown a few curveballs at her. One of the biggest had been a Force sensitive living among the Mandos- Gotab. He'd kept this fact hidden all these years, but she'd been able to sense it, and now she needed to address it. "Former Jedi," he reminded her. "You've got the whole Jedi Council to ask, Jaina. I bet they answer your comm right away."
"Maybe, but none of them have seen the galaxy from both sides. It's not every day you run across a Jedi who walked away from the Order but who wasn't a Sith." Which wasn't entirely true. Thanks to Fandom, Jaina had known two, Zayne and Jolee. And Jolee was why she was here. During the Vong war, when she'd had hard times and questioned herself, she'd been able to go to Caritas and ask questions, and while it might take him half an hour to get to his point, she always walked away having learned something. That was the sort of thing she needed now.
"I didn't just walk away from the Order- I didn't exercise Right of Denial. I stopped being a Jedi," he explained. "I know the dark side, too. I lived alongside it for too many years, and I can't say that it was always a bad thing. But you're right, I'm no Sith. I'm just a man."
"That's what I need to hear right now," she said, and when he didn't look like he would argue against listening, she continued. "I've got a terrible choice to make. I have to stop my brother. I think I'm the only one who can. Mirta Gev, of all people, just begged me to think twice about killing him and to leave him to someone else. There is no one else."
"Not even Master Luke Skywalker? My, my. So this one's bigger than Palpatine, is he?"
"You sound very bitter about the Order," she noted.
Gotab watched the sky for a long moment, either deciding what to say, or whether he'd explain at all. "The Order has long been about justifying its own existence, about acquiring and holding power, and from what I see now, nothing much has changed since my day," he told her. "I know what I swore to do as a Jedi, and it didn't have anything to do with turning a blind eye to social evils because the Sith were a bigger evil. But every act of evil we commit creates an environment where the Sith can exist. So Jedi who cut corners- a Jedi Order that cuts corners- forfeit their right to hold the moral high ground. Yes, I'm bitter. That's why I stopped being a Jedi and just became someone who had Force skills and wanted to do no harm. I've killed, and not regretted it. I've never wrung my hands while whining about my conscience. So if you genuinely want my advice- well, to hear my view, because that's all it is- then, Jaina Solo, we talk purely as individuals who can use the Force. I won't help the Jedi Order."
She did understand the viewpoint. Again, she'd known Jolee. "This is about me and Jacen," she assured him.
"And you could have stopped him, any of you, if you'd united against him. One Sith can't stand against hundreds of Jedi. Your problem is that he's your own flesh and blood, and none of you have had the courage to do the job," Gotab said, not bothering to sugar coat it. "You've been hoping that he'll see the light and stop so that you don't have to do the dirty work. How many ordinary beings have died while you made excuses for him because he's family?"
"I know. Okay, I know," Jaina said, closing her eyes and nodding like that would stop it. She knew he was right. No one had helped Alema, for instance. According to Jag, she'd been like her old self when she died, sounding a little bitter about what life had done to her. They hadn't made any attempts to redeem her, just hunted her down. She'd done far less than Jacen had, and she hadn't been sane. "You're going to give me the speech about no attachment, aren't you?"
Gotab turned to face her and smiled. "Attachment- and you inevitably use your powers to serve your own family, or in your case... you fail to use them. Avoid attachment and you become an enactor of ritual, a sterile creature unable to truly understand love and sacrifice. There's no easy answer for a Force user except rigid self-control, and I do not mean avoiding the dark side. I mean not using the Force at all."
That last part sounded like Jacen at sixteen, and Jaina felt a little pang at that. "That's not going to help anyone stop Jacen becoming a galactic tyrant."
"Lovely job title, that. Galactic Tyrant wanted: apply within."
"You're mocking me."
"You want to know what I would do in your position."
"Yes."
"I'd kill him, out of love."
Jaina felt shocked. He meant that, too. He wasn't mocking anymore, he was being honest. "I can't avoid this, can I?" she said, her voice sounding hollow in her own ears.
"It's a lot more common than you think. People kill the one they love all the time. The motive can be anything, but in the end, you end the life you would've done anything to preserve, and then... then, you go on living. You can kill out of jealousy, passion, revenge, mercy, duty, justice, greed, carelessness. How many people have you killed in combat? In war? More than one, I'll bet. You didn't love those people, but they're no less dead, so the only difference is how you square it with your conscience each day. We're talking about selfishness here: how will I feel? How will Jaina feel?"
That was a little iffy to her. There were some kills she'd felt bad about over the years, though... not many. So maybe he was right there, and if she was being selfish... Well, then she was afraid this would break her. She regretted the things she'd done after losing Anakin; they'd been things she'd needed to do to end up where she was, but that didn't mean she was okay with it. She was afraid that if she lost her twin, by her own hand, that she'd just crack right in two and never be able to be fixed. "And the rest of my family..."
"Oh, sorry. I thought we were talking about the welfare of the galaxy. How foolish of me."
Point. "I thought I'd made up my mind so many times, but Mirta brought me up short today. My brother killed her mother, and she still begged me not to kill him, just in case I was wrong," she said slowly. There were some extenuating circumstances there. Mirta had wanted Fett dead for years and then found out something that had made her see the situation a lot differently, to the point where she'd freaked out at the thought that she might have killed him without having all the information. And let's hear it for families more screwed up than Jaina's.
"And what if you let him live, and you're wrong?"
Then more people died. And those deaths would be on her conscience.
"They call me the Sword of the Jedi. That's supposed to be my destiny," she said after a long moment, waiting to see what he'd say to that. Everyone seemed to have their own thoughts on what it meant.
"A sword is a symbol of justice in many cultures, Jaina," Gotab said. "Real justice is blind, and personal feelings don't matter."
It wasn't that any of this was really news to her. She'd had years to think about it, and when everything finally happened it'd seemed too quick, and there were reasons to be selfish, to not put a stop to things, because he was her brother and it would hurt and the ramifications would be both galactic and terrifyingly personal.
"It's not justice, and it's not punishment," she said at last. "It's about saying: this is as far as it goes. I have to stop him now."
"It hurts to say it." He almost seemed sympathetic. Almost.
"Not as much as I thought," she said, and the fact was, till she told Jag she was going after Jacen, she'd never talked about it except in vague terms. Having it out in the open was still very new to her, and it still didn't quite seem real. "But at the moment, it's just words."
Gotab paused, looking thoughtful. "We keep strills," he said. "Hunting animals, the ones with folded skin and six legs that you might have seen around. A friend of mine loved his, but it started going crazy and attacking everyone. He had to shoot it. Poor thing. It had a brain tumor. It wasn't itself. Killing it broke his heart, but he couldn't let it carry on, not just for everyone's safety, but for the animal, too, because it was utterly miserable. You sometimes have to kill what you love, end their pain and take it on yourself- because that's what love is, sometimes."
And suddenly it made sense, why it was her. Jacen wasn't crazy. There was clearly something wrong with him, yes, and apparently whatever it was would still be a mystery in two years. It wasn't that she hadn't tried to help, either; that was a courtesy given to Jacen that Alema hadn't had. It was just that Jacen had done everything he could to push her away and hurt her till she had to disengage. And then it had escalated by the time he did it to Ben and Tenel Ka, the two people left who were closest to him. He'd isolated himself to the point that there wasn't any fixing it. Everyone he loved had turned against him because he'd orchestrated it that way. It was something Jaina had tried to do when she turned, too. Jacen had just succeeded at it.
He had to be miserable.
She thought of what she'd heard of Alema's last moments, and of her grandfather, stuck in a position he couldn't get out of because of his prior actions and how much he regretted it now, and her heart ached for Jacen. She had to be the one to do this because she was the only one who could potentially succeed at it and do it out of love.
"To think I blamed Jacen's weakness for getting my other brother killed," she sighed. "It was me who was going to the dark side then."
"Forget about you," Gotab said, so sharply it made her look back at him. "You have a job to do, that's all. Personally, I never bought this pious nonsense about Jedi violence being fine as long as it was done with a pure heart. Sophistry, my dear. You're going to kill your brother because he's a power-hungry, murdering dictator, no one else in your Jedi circle has the moral courage to do it, and you stand the best chance of stopping him. Finish the job like Fett and Beviin showed you. Then you can worry about your motives when the galaxy is safe again, and you have time for the luxury of contemplating the state of your soul."
It was harsh, but she needed to hear it. Right there, he'd just laid out everything she knew and had been dithering over anyway. When- and if- she got through this, she was going to be a complete mess, it was going to cause a lot of pain for the people she loved, and there was nothing about this that wasn't going to hurt. But she'd do it.
She stood. "Thank you, Bard'ika," she said, using his title. It was a sign of respect, and she definitely owed him some for this. "I didn't come here to feel better about this situation. I came here for clarity. You've given me that."
"It has to be your choice, Jaina. Not my orders," he said.
Jaina fell silent, and realized for the first time since all this started that her path and every step of it was entirely clear to her. "I choose, then."
[NFB, NFI, OOC okay. Dialogue taken from Revelation by Karen Traviss, and cut to like half its length. See, if we still had Jolee, I wouldn't have to do this.]
"I knew you couldn't leave it alone."
Jaina smiled wryly as she helped the old man sit on an outcrop of granite. "I need guidance."
"Fett's still too busy... discussing vital commercial issues with Admiral Daala, then," he assumed.
She shook her head. First... she was not happy about her and Fett working together, but at the moment there was nothing she could do about it. Second, she'd needed Fett to teach her a thing or four about dealing with total bastards who played dirty. She didn't need his guidance on this matter. "It's not Fett's experience I need. It's yours. I need to hear this from a Jedi."
Mandalore had thrown a few curveballs at her. One of the biggest had been a Force sensitive living among the Mandos- Gotab. He'd kept this fact hidden all these years, but she'd been able to sense it, and now she needed to address it. "Former Jedi," he reminded her. "You've got the whole Jedi Council to ask, Jaina. I bet they answer your comm right away."
"Maybe, but none of them have seen the galaxy from both sides. It's not every day you run across a Jedi who walked away from the Order but who wasn't a Sith." Which wasn't entirely true. Thanks to Fandom, Jaina had known two, Zayne and Jolee. And Jolee was why she was here. During the Vong war, when she'd had hard times and questioned herself, she'd been able to go to Caritas and ask questions, and while it might take him half an hour to get to his point, she always walked away having learned something. That was the sort of thing she needed now.
"I didn't just walk away from the Order- I didn't exercise Right of Denial. I stopped being a Jedi," he explained. "I know the dark side, too. I lived alongside it for too many years, and I can't say that it was always a bad thing. But you're right, I'm no Sith. I'm just a man."
"That's what I need to hear right now," she said, and when he didn't look like he would argue against listening, she continued. "I've got a terrible choice to make. I have to stop my brother. I think I'm the only one who can. Mirta Gev, of all people, just begged me to think twice about killing him and to leave him to someone else. There is no one else."
"Not even Master Luke Skywalker? My, my. So this one's bigger than Palpatine, is he?"
"You sound very bitter about the Order," she noted.
Gotab watched the sky for a long moment, either deciding what to say, or whether he'd explain at all. "The Order has long been about justifying its own existence, about acquiring and holding power, and from what I see now, nothing much has changed since my day," he told her. "I know what I swore to do as a Jedi, and it didn't have anything to do with turning a blind eye to social evils because the Sith were a bigger evil. But every act of evil we commit creates an environment where the Sith can exist. So Jedi who cut corners- a Jedi Order that cuts corners- forfeit their right to hold the moral high ground. Yes, I'm bitter. That's why I stopped being a Jedi and just became someone who had Force skills and wanted to do no harm. I've killed, and not regretted it. I've never wrung my hands while whining about my conscience. So if you genuinely want my advice- well, to hear my view, because that's all it is- then, Jaina Solo, we talk purely as individuals who can use the Force. I won't help the Jedi Order."
She did understand the viewpoint. Again, she'd known Jolee. "This is about me and Jacen," she assured him.
"And you could have stopped him, any of you, if you'd united against him. One Sith can't stand against hundreds of Jedi. Your problem is that he's your own flesh and blood, and none of you have had the courage to do the job," Gotab said, not bothering to sugar coat it. "You've been hoping that he'll see the light and stop so that you don't have to do the dirty work. How many ordinary beings have died while you made excuses for him because he's family?"
"I know. Okay, I know," Jaina said, closing her eyes and nodding like that would stop it. She knew he was right. No one had helped Alema, for instance. According to Jag, she'd been like her old self when she died, sounding a little bitter about what life had done to her. They hadn't made any attempts to redeem her, just hunted her down. She'd done far less than Jacen had, and she hadn't been sane. "You're going to give me the speech about no attachment, aren't you?"
Gotab turned to face her and smiled. "Attachment- and you inevitably use your powers to serve your own family, or in your case... you fail to use them. Avoid attachment and you become an enactor of ritual, a sterile creature unable to truly understand love and sacrifice. There's no easy answer for a Force user except rigid self-control, and I do not mean avoiding the dark side. I mean not using the Force at all."
That last part sounded like Jacen at sixteen, and Jaina felt a little pang at that. "That's not going to help anyone stop Jacen becoming a galactic tyrant."
"Lovely job title, that. Galactic Tyrant wanted: apply within."
"You're mocking me."
"You want to know what I would do in your position."
"Yes."
"I'd kill him, out of love."
Jaina felt shocked. He meant that, too. He wasn't mocking anymore, he was being honest. "I can't avoid this, can I?" she said, her voice sounding hollow in her own ears.
"It's a lot more common than you think. People kill the one they love all the time. The motive can be anything, but in the end, you end the life you would've done anything to preserve, and then... then, you go on living. You can kill out of jealousy, passion, revenge, mercy, duty, justice, greed, carelessness. How many people have you killed in combat? In war? More than one, I'll bet. You didn't love those people, but they're no less dead, so the only difference is how you square it with your conscience each day. We're talking about selfishness here: how will I feel? How will Jaina feel?"
That was a little iffy to her. There were some kills she'd felt bad about over the years, though... not many. So maybe he was right there, and if she was being selfish... Well, then she was afraid this would break her. She regretted the things she'd done after losing Anakin; they'd been things she'd needed to do to end up where she was, but that didn't mean she was okay with it. She was afraid that if she lost her twin, by her own hand, that she'd just crack right in two and never be able to be fixed. "And the rest of my family..."
"Oh, sorry. I thought we were talking about the welfare of the galaxy. How foolish of me."
Point. "I thought I'd made up my mind so many times, but Mirta brought me up short today. My brother killed her mother, and she still begged me not to kill him, just in case I was wrong," she said slowly. There were some extenuating circumstances there. Mirta had wanted Fett dead for years and then found out something that had made her see the situation a lot differently, to the point where she'd freaked out at the thought that she might have killed him without having all the information. And let's hear it for families more screwed up than Jaina's.
"And what if you let him live, and you're wrong?"
Then more people died. And those deaths would be on her conscience.
"They call me the Sword of the Jedi. That's supposed to be my destiny," she said after a long moment, waiting to see what he'd say to that. Everyone seemed to have their own thoughts on what it meant.
"A sword is a symbol of justice in many cultures, Jaina," Gotab said. "Real justice is blind, and personal feelings don't matter."
It wasn't that any of this was really news to her. She'd had years to think about it, and when everything finally happened it'd seemed too quick, and there were reasons to be selfish, to not put a stop to things, because he was her brother and it would hurt and the ramifications would be both galactic and terrifyingly personal.
"It's not justice, and it's not punishment," she said at last. "It's about saying: this is as far as it goes. I have to stop him now."
"It hurts to say it." He almost seemed sympathetic. Almost.
"Not as much as I thought," she said, and the fact was, till she told Jag she was going after Jacen, she'd never talked about it except in vague terms. Having it out in the open was still very new to her, and it still didn't quite seem real. "But at the moment, it's just words."
Gotab paused, looking thoughtful. "We keep strills," he said. "Hunting animals, the ones with folded skin and six legs that you might have seen around. A friend of mine loved his, but it started going crazy and attacking everyone. He had to shoot it. Poor thing. It had a brain tumor. It wasn't itself. Killing it broke his heart, but he couldn't let it carry on, not just for everyone's safety, but for the animal, too, because it was utterly miserable. You sometimes have to kill what you love, end their pain and take it on yourself- because that's what love is, sometimes."
And suddenly it made sense, why it was her. Jacen wasn't crazy. There was clearly something wrong with him, yes, and apparently whatever it was would still be a mystery in two years. It wasn't that she hadn't tried to help, either; that was a courtesy given to Jacen that Alema hadn't had. It was just that Jacen had done everything he could to push her away and hurt her till she had to disengage. And then it had escalated by the time he did it to Ben and Tenel Ka, the two people left who were closest to him. He'd isolated himself to the point that there wasn't any fixing it. Everyone he loved had turned against him because he'd orchestrated it that way. It was something Jaina had tried to do when she turned, too. Jacen had just succeeded at it.
He had to be miserable.
She thought of what she'd heard of Alema's last moments, and of her grandfather, stuck in a position he couldn't get out of because of his prior actions and how much he regretted it now, and her heart ached for Jacen. She had to be the one to do this because she was the only one who could potentially succeed at it and do it out of love.
"To think I blamed Jacen's weakness for getting my other brother killed," she sighed. "It was me who was going to the dark side then."
"Forget about you," Gotab said, so sharply it made her look back at him. "You have a job to do, that's all. Personally, I never bought this pious nonsense about Jedi violence being fine as long as it was done with a pure heart. Sophistry, my dear. You're going to kill your brother because he's a power-hungry, murdering dictator, no one else in your Jedi circle has the moral courage to do it, and you stand the best chance of stopping him. Finish the job like Fett and Beviin showed you. Then you can worry about your motives when the galaxy is safe again, and you have time for the luxury of contemplating the state of your soul."
It was harsh, but she needed to hear it. Right there, he'd just laid out everything she knew and had been dithering over anyway. When- and if- she got through this, she was going to be a complete mess, it was going to cause a lot of pain for the people she loved, and there was nothing about this that wasn't going to hurt. But she'd do it.
She stood. "Thank you, Bard'ika," she said, using his title. It was a sign of respect, and she definitely owed him some for this. "I didn't come here to feel better about this situation. I came here for clarity. You've given me that."
"It has to be your choice, Jaina. Not my orders," he said.
Jaina fell silent, and realized for the first time since all this started that her path and every step of it was entirely clear to her. "I choose, then."
[NFB, NFI, OOC okay. Dialogue taken from Revelation by Karen Traviss, and cut to like half its length. See, if we still had Jolee, I wouldn't have to do this.]