solo_sword | Room 313, Wednesday evening

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Room 313, Wednesday evening

Jaina sort of felt like she should be doing something in preparation for all the trips home, besides stalking people for into as they got it. And getting frustrated when time in the computer lab proved that no, there was no possible way- for her, anyway- to try to connect to her galaxy's holonet from it, and even if she knew Lowie wouldn't be able to do it she still sent him a transmission asking anyway.

She'd tried meditating, gave up on that quickly, and said screw it all and did laundry instead. Putting it away was nice and mindless, but it worked.

[Expecting one, but post and door are open!]

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There was a Firecat looking in the door at her, and then a few moments later there was a Karal knocking politely. "Jaina?"

She turned from her closet, smiling. "Hey, come on in," she said, glad that there wasn't anything anyone was likely to trip over. She wasn't sure how good attention to detail was yet. "Yeah, I flaked, didn't I?"

"I don't think you did," he said, frowning a little as he followed Altra inside, stepping carefully. "I wouldn't have been good company, in any event." He smiled a little. "I was worrying about today, which proved to be needless."

For a moment she worried she'd forgotten something over the week she was gone in a weekend. "What was today?"

"Just the explosives class," he admitted sheepishly. "I managed to work myself up into being very nervous, which was very silly. But Evey was there, and for some reason the teacher asked me to be her assistant, so it's all completely fine." He sat carefully on the edge of her bed. "How was your trip home?"

"You can sit," she said, gesturing to either the bed or chair. "It was all right. Informative and mostly quiet, except that I managed to not let Kyp get blown up, so I feel like I've grown."

"Thank you," he said with a smile. "And I'm glad you didn't let him get blown up. I didn't realise there would be a chance of anyone being blown up on this tripe. Is everything all right?"

Jaina paused. "Things at home are getting considerably worse, especially for the Jedi. The fighting happened on a simple reconnaissance mission. We're actually in a position now where the thing to do would be stop arguing and just do something about it."

"Oh," he said quietly, and Altra paced over to sit at Karal's feet, looking up at Jaina intently. "How bad was the fighting? Are you all right?"

"Kyp's squadron lost at least half its roster," she said. "My team came out of it fine. I think I'm a little more freaked out that my little brother is leading things now, but at least he's good at it."

"Things are becoming very bad," he said, shaken both by the loss of so many and by how easily Jaina spoke of it. Sunlord watch over them. "I'm sorry for your losses, Jaina. How is Jacen coping with being the leader?"

"No, not Jacen. Anakin. The seventeen-year-old," she said. Not that she hadn't been organizing military actions at seventeen, but that was totally different. "He seems to be doing okay. I back him up tactically; Uncle Luke says Anakin decides the what, I decide the how. But he seems to really know what he's doing, and his first move after the fight was to make sure I was okay from a leader standpoint. I think it's a natural place for him."

Karal went pink. "My apologies. I think I have a mental blank where he's concerned because, well, of the one that is here." Not that Karal would ever call him by his first name. "It is hard to imagine another." He folded his hands in his lap. "Seventeen is young, but some people are simply natural leaders. It sounds as if he might be one, and having your support would make it that much easier."

"I like him in the role, weird as it is," Jaina admitted. "He cares about the people under him as much as he does the mission, which... he may need to work on, honestly. But he knows how to get the job done. We need that right now."

He nodded, reaching down to stroke Altra's head. "When you say he needs to work on it, do you mean he should care more, or care less?"

"I don't know if I want to say care less, but..." She shrugged. "If you're in any kind of battle situation like we keep going into, you're going to lose people. You can't let it affect what you're there to do. And once you start leading things, not only will you lose people, but they'll be people you put in that position. And yet you still have to carry on with the reason you're there and be the example for everyone else to follow. I'm not sure he can do that yet."

He nodded again, this time in understanding. "I know I could never do it," Karal told her, voice quiet. "I can't imagine how hard it must be, for him and for you." He was quiet for a moment. "I do know if it was me being sent out, I would be glad to know that my leader cared about me, as a person. I've seen what happens when fighters cease to be human to their leader, and it was very bad."

"I'm not saying it's wrong to care," Jaina said, not arguing as much as she was trying to figure it out for herself. She knew where she stood, but she'd never had to explain it. "It's more like prioritizing. Which I know sounds horrible, but when you're in charge like that, you not only accept responsibility for your command, you also accept it for the outcome of the mission. And you took Ethics, right? You know the question about whether it was worth sacrificing one person to save a hundred or so? It's the same principle."

Karal and Altra both frowned at her. "No it's not," Karal said, though gently. "It is not a question of sacrificing one to save many. It is a question of caring for that one and recognising the sacrifice and the loss. A good leader must care for their people as people. If they don't, their losses become meaningless beyond the numbers. And while caring for your people would make it far harder to send them to die, isn't it a leader's responsibility to carry those burdens, for the good of those they lead?"

"No disrespect," she said slowly, "but the day you send good people to die for something you didn't have the information to disagree with, it's a lot harder to take that stance. It's war. Nothing's clear-cut."

Karal was quiet for a moment. "I have never sent people to die, and I never will, but I was born and grew up in a country that was trying to commit genocide, and would burn its own people alive if they were inconvenient. I've lived through a war against a man whose fighters were nothing more than slaves, and whose loss meant nothing. He sent them to slaughter as casually as you or I would swat a bug." He lifted his chin. "The day a leader stops caring for his people is the day he ceases to be a good leader. Any leader, whether in war or in peace, must care. It is that, above all else, which makes them fit to lead."

"Again, nothing against caring. It'd be dangerously un-Jedi not to," Jaina said. "But there has to be some sort of distance when you're in the position to have to do things like that. Otherwise you're just going to get slammed with it when something bad happens- and it will- and you risk the chance of getting others killed just based on your reaction."

Again, Karal was quiet for a moment. "There is someone I'd like you to meet, if we can find the time for you come to Valdemar with me," he finally said. "Herald Kerowyn, who led a mercenary company, one of the most successful that's ever been heard of, before she was chosen. Heralds are so like Jedi they could be cast from the same mould, and she is one of the great leaders, in war and in peace. She loved her people, and they her. And when she had to send them to battle, she did so with full knowledge of what it could mean, knowing there was a good chance they wouldn't come back. And when they died, she mourned, but she didn't let it affect her ability to lead, because those who were still alive depended on her to keep them that way and she wouldn't let them down."

Jaina listened, and figured at the very least that was probably an end to the debate, which she was fine with. "I'd be okay with that," she said finally. "It might be a while, though. I'm going to be going up and back between here and home, and between my schedule and John's, I think I'll mostly be gone weekends."

"Will you come and talk to me when you're here?" he asked. "I know you won't have a great deal of time, but you are going to be in a dangerous, stressful situation." He leaned forward a little. "And you know how I worry. It would make me worry less if you would."

"Of course," she said. "I don't see things like that battle being common, though. I think it'll mainly be dealing with animals that are trained to kill me dead like thirty ways that we know of so far, which is actually a lot more boring than it sounds." No, it wasn't.

Altra gave her a look that clearly said he, at least, didn't believe a word of it. "That doesn't sound boring," Karal ventured with a small smile. "But I would be a great deal happier if they didn't."

"So would I. But oh, apparently they're toxic dead, too, and we're starting to collect carcasses for study," she said, sounding thrilled. "I think I'd rather just fight them."

"Oh." Karal shook his head, trying not to worry. "Gloves. Very thick gloves," he said lightly. "And a face mask. Maybe an extremely long stick?"

"Proper suits were invented for a reason," Jaina said with a tiny smile. "There are too few of us to risk dying stupidly. We'll be careful."

"I forget that you have much better ways of dealing with that sort of thing. If it were in Karse, it would be gloves and a long stick," he said. "And I should go and leave you in peace, especially since your time here is going to be limited."

"I can still use a big stick. We just call them lightsabers," she grinned. "Thanks for coming. I'll stop by when we get back." Wow, she wouldn't immediately have to catch John up on her trip. That was going to throw off her whole routine.

Karal chuckled as he stood. "I was glad to see you, and I'll be even happier to see you when you come back." With Altra guiding him, he walked over to touch her shoulder. "Stay safe," he said quietly, before turning to leave.

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Room 313, Wednesday evening

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