Crix was back on Corellia but in Jedi Robes rather than the clothes he'd managed to take with him from Coruscant. It felt like so long ago that he had fled from the city-planet and headed out into the Galaxy with his friends in search of the Jedi, in search of a purpose that they had yet to discover. Looking back on it, even though he had only been gone for a couple of months, made the whole thing feel like it had happened decades ago, to a person so removed from who he was now that it was like it had happened to an entirely different person.
But it wasn't a different person was it? No, he was the one who had roped them all into the misadventure and he was the one to convince them that he could repair a ship for them to all use together. He might have fixed up the ship but that hardly mattered when he had then left them, with only a group com message by way of explanation.
Of all his friends, he felt the worst about Penny. He had convinced her every step of the way because she had been so cautious, so uncertain, and every step of the way he had convinced her. It was her belief in him that had brought her out from Coruscant and out to Corellia with him and the others. The others? He didn't believe for a second he had any real sway over their thoughts - they all made up their own minds to follow him. But Penny?
He'd led her here and he'd left her here.
Following the twisting, swirling, feeling of the Force in his gut led Crix to one of the offshoots of the Central Corellian Library. It was a titanic building, the sheer scale making it one of the largest buildings he had ever seen before, let alone stepping inside of. Even the great temple at Yavin felt as though it was small when he walked through the racks of holobooks and even physical books.
But he could feel her.
The warmth of her cheek as it flushed from another of his flirty remarks... her twinkling laugh when she was able to relax and just let herself have some fun...
Even his memories of her tied so closely to the Force so that her presence in the Force, to him, was the way those memories of her had made him feel. It was with absolute certainty that he stepped into the aisle. Certainty that the woman resting halfway up a ladder, doing something with the books there, was exactly who he was looking for. As with Willa before her, he knew that he could leave before she could see him, that he could leave her to the life she had managed to make for herself while he had been out there running around looking for his mom.
While he had been achieving their shared dream of reaching the Jedi in the most horrific way imaginable.
But he couldn't just step away.
"Hello Penny - it's been awhile."
@Charndley