Ask The Rebel Path

[Maxims Tionson]

Max was already sick of the lights.

Funny that the worst thing about being moved to the med-bay of Yavin 4's Jedi Temple was the lights. He had only just arrived back at the Temple, his layover around Corellia to throw off pursuit had been a strategically sound idea but one that his overall health had suffered for. An attending healer had done some preliminary scans and treatment on his right arm and already he knew the news was bad.

Apparently the delay of treatment getting from Corellia to Yavin meant that parts of his lower right arm were dying beyond the rate of what they could fix. Already they were prepping localized bacta injections and blood infusions but it was to minimize the damage now rather than to fix it. He stared down at his right forearm, encased in a glass vessel that surrounded what remained in bacta. His ribs were bad but they were something that he could live with for now. The healer on duty had told him it was a miracle he'd managed to use the Force to stop himself from bleeding out or going into shock on the way.

Didn't feel like a miracle.

Rolled into the small medbay from the treatment area, Max just stared up at the ceiling, at the damned lights, as he was moved into position on the bay. He could feel his friend through the Force but he couldn't bring himself to look away from the lights.

Damn those lights to hell.

"Anybody die, Hans?"

Even above feeling sorry for himself, Max couldn't help but ask it first.

@Mr. Teatime

 

[Hannibal Grayza]

Again, once again, the young man felt he couldn't keep his hands from shaking. Since leaving Sullust he'd been trying to sort through the backlash from his last ditch attempt to stifle the Eternal from attacking the others. He'd had trouble closing off properly since, which did absolutely no good for his ability to focus. Visions of a dead world didn't help either. He'd tried to weaponize the thing that kept him safe and it had failed. And that didn't even include the physical recovery.

Morellians recovered from injury better than humans tended to, but that didn't mean it went any faster or less painfully. Somewhere beside Max the young man lay, bacta wrappings around him from neck to toe. His defensive tactic kept the lightning away from his organs but it still had to go through something. He'd arrived to the temple on Yavin 4 from his own stopover from Corellia covered in streaking, fractal lightning burns across his body. At least it was still a kind of healing he could help guide himself. Even master healers couldn't replace what Max had lost.

He adjusted himself in his sat-up bed, grimacing with a hiss at the pain that shot through his ribs in particular. Damn Rodian got him good on top of everything else. He looked briefly over at the fluids drip he was hooked to to counteract the fluid loss from severe burns. He hoped he didn't make getting burned a habit. He looked back up at the ceiling. The light were remarkably bright here.

"No one," he replied with some strain. Talking and breathing aggravated everything, and he wasn't helping his exhaustion by trying to keep up a low level healing going on himself. He couldn't let the burns scar too deep and prevent mobility. Of course he was going to keep them afterwards. He always kept his scars, just there enough. A scar for every failure, to keep him grounded. He didn't want to forget those lessons.

"Max," he started, then paused. He wanted to word what he had to say properly and his thoughts still felt muddled. He was tired. "My friend. You have something to say," he finished, a statement rather than a question. Max wasn't hiding and Hannibal didn't have the energy or focus not to get echoes of him and everyone else nearby.

@Nefieslab

 

[Maxims Tionson]

No one was dead.

Well that was about as good as could be expected considering their attempt to distract the Eternal and the other Sith from Talak's infiltration had gone so very shite. Technically it had succeeded in allowing Talak to get down there but he didn't know what had happened there. He didn't think anyone else did either actually - mutilated over a mission he didn't even know the outcome of.

Heh.

Max just blinked slowly as he looked up at the lights of the medbay for a few moments longer. Through the Force he could feel his friend, feel the pains that ran through him. What was that expression? Misery loved company? What a shite karking expression - just meant more karking misery and he'd had enough of that for one lifetime.

Did he have something to say?

"Got two things that just..." he gestured with his left hand, making a circle over his head, "Just keep going round and round in my head... first is a question that I've got an answer for and the answer confuses the hell out of me."

He turned his head to look across the distance between the two beds at his friend. Seeing him all wrapped up was, strangely, comforting but seeing him still left his gut shifting badly. Not because of the injuries but because of the absense of energy in his friend. Hannibal without the barely noticeable aura of energy and activity was a sad sight for him to see.

"Was it worth it?" he asked the question aloud, turning back to look at the lights because it hurt less than seeing his friend so subdued, "Was it worth going and throwing myself into the blender for one woman?"

He knew his answer but he wanted to hear Hannibal's.

@Mr. Teatime

 

[Hannibal Grayza]

Max posed a question that Hannibal perhaps put a little too much thought into. Perhaps Max simply meant Trys Aran, but he could also mean Nash, or the Darth who had ended her life. In the end, though, it didn't really matter which. He had his answer all the same. He just hoped Max understood.

"It was foolish and ill-planned. We barely got out alive."

Alone in the medbay, with just his good friend, Hannibal closed his eyes and he smiled. A real one, all the way to his eyes, but one tinged with sadness. The kind that sat like a weight on a person's shoulders for their whole life. The kind that dragged some people down a sheer, black cliff, while others refused to fall and fought against gravity itself. Hannibal had decided which he was long ago, but that didn't make it go away and right now he was too tired to keep his expression in place.

"But, that doesn't mean it wasn't worth it. To live is to suffer, Max, one way or another. But it's also true that life is worth living. Whether ten thousand, or only one... If we can unburden them of some of the weight life has given them, isn't it worth it?"

@Nefieslab

 

[Maxims Tionson]

Foolish and ill-planned were two descriptions of the events of Sullust put rather nicely in Max's own opinion. But they were Jedi Masters so it was better to be more measured and controlled in their words than to admit that it had been a clusterkark. If they were both still Knights they could but, ah, the joys of gaining responsibility and perspective.

He hummed in agreement but didn't vocally react in any other manner as he continued to stare up at the lights on the ceiling. Max was sure he would end up counting things on the ceiling before long but his mind was too restless for him to try and relax as the healers had advised him to do.

Still, something told him to turn back to Hans because he wasn't done and he got a chance to see his friend smile and almost relax a little bit. Like he was so used to being tensed that just letting himself relax like this was something that he didn't get to do very often. Max just watched him and listened in silence.

Staring at his friend for a moment, Max smirked ever so slightly, turning back to the ceiling.

"Glad it's not just me." he admitted quietly, "I thought to myself that if we stopped going to save people like Trys... people of honesty, integrity and of the courage to stand for their people? Where would it stop? Would we stop rushing to the aid of a village? City? Planet? The second we stop acting to save every life we can, it's the second I stop wanting to be a Jedi."

It was good to know that he hadn't gone mad, that someone else believed the same thing he did. Max wasn't fussy either - he didn't need everyone to believe in the same things he did, just Hannibal was enough for him.

"Second thing rattling around in my head is... more personal." he admitted quietly, "I... I held back, Hans. Against the councillor. Got my reasons for never pushing for a lethal solution but I... I can't escape the feeling that I failed because I didn't."

@Mr. Teatime

 

[Hannibal Grayza]

Hannibal had to agree. He was sure that, in a way, Max understood what it was for him to fight and why he chose to do it anyway. The young Jedi had even gone through similar struggles around killing opponents, Sith in particular. Maybe between the two of them they could figure things out?

Hans was quiet again for a little while, both to think to himself and to gather a little extra energy. Of course Max held back from a lethal solution. He was Max, a Jedi. Most Jedi did, couldn't easily handle killing another. In the time of relative peace since Rey Skywalker the Jedi had never gone to war. But Max had his own reasons, as he said. Something deeply personal that weighed him down.

"When I dueled Ender Halcyon on Coruscant," he began, turning to look at the ceiling as he spoke, "I tried to avoid lethal cuts. He took advantage of this and in the pause of a stalemate he escaped. Perhaps if I had gone for a kill he wouldn't have escaped to kill so many more people." He let that answer hang in the air a while before continuing, silent save for the sounds of medical machinery and old air conditioning.

"But if I had, I wouldn't have found Talak in time. He could be dead and Sol Puara alive. Things are funny that way sometimes, aren't they?" He chuckled quietly to himself, then winced when several areas protested of the sudden movement. Hannibal cleared his throat.

"I think instead of focusing on what could have been, one should adapt to what they have. Can you say for sure if you'd tried to kill that woman you'd have won against her and the Eternal?" he asked, turning to look at Max with a kind, friendly smile. "Is burying an enemy when you're not ready to worth failing yourself?"

@Nefieslab

 

[Maxims Tionson]

Max stared back up at the ceiling and let Hannibal talk. It was... oddly soothing to let his friend just talk away at him in answer to his question. Hannibal had a habit of deflecting things with humor but listening to him being serious for so long was actually a rather pleasant experience. Part of him wanted to point that out to his friend but he couldn't help but think it would probably ruin the moment if he did that so instead he just listened and smiled ever so slightly.

In the end he wasn't saying anything that Max hadn't thought to himself a million times in the past but, well, Sullust had been different in that it was more personal than pretty much anything else. Only one other fight had ever been more personal than Sullust and it had resulted in his self-imposed rule.

"I think you're right - I think I needed to hear it said aloud by someone else though. Sounds a lot less like platitudes I'm telling myself to 'feel better' when it comes from someone else."

Letting out a soft breath, Max decided he was going to tell him.

"Used to be I could kill if push came to shove... never liked it but even back when I was a cop, I'd kill if it was a safer option for everyone else involved." He reached up and idly scratched at the scar under his left eye socket, "Last resort but always an option type deal my Master used to say. I was an older student and she was my age when she was teaching me and we... hit it off."

Just talking about it made his chest both tighten and loosen at the same time. Even if Hannibal had drifted off to sleep from the meds or whatever, it felt like something he needed to say aloud.

"We were in a relationship when she Fell and she tried to take me with her." he choked up ever so slightly at that part, pushing onward anyway, "The Jedi came for her and I fought to stop the fighting. It gets blurry, honestly... some days I remember it clearly and other times I don't. Just know when it was over I was the only one alive."

@Mr. Teatime

 

[Hannibal Grayza]

Hannibal was silent for a while, letting Max speak freely and without interruption. Instead the young man just closed his eyes and listened. At the moment he couldn't exactly help the empathic impressions he felt coming off of Max, the ghosts of old and painful memories. So he might as well accept them.

It seemed a traumatic experience, truly. Hannibal thought Max had good reason to avoid killing if that was what was dredged up when he did. It'd be buried in his heart for so long. It was a good reason, but it was also Max would have to let go of eventually. Not in the way some in the more orthodox camp advocated, that wasn't something Hannibal always considered to be a healthy way of handling it. As usual though, he wasn't one to outright give such advice. It wasn't a method he could explain anyway.

He gave Max a respectful silence for a few seconds after he was done speaking before he said something himself.

"I don't like fighting, you know," he started quietly, opening his eyes to look at his bandage covered hands. "Well, I like the competitive aspect. I don't like the rest. Ever since I was little, see, I would pick up what everyone else was feeling. I was perfectly fine in practice, but actually harming someone else?" He paused, then rose his left hand from the bedsheets, where it shook slightly in the air. A textbook reaction to anxiety or trauma. His arm slowly came back down, resting against his leg.

"Can't do it. I eventually figured out how close off, deal with it later in peace, process through it all a piece at a time. It was easier, and I could fight. But not kill. Not until after Sol Puara, anyway." The young Master leaned back again in his bed, adjusting himself a little to find the least uncomfortable positioning. For him, fighting was like a form of torture. Without his technique of protecting himself and numbing his empathic senses wasn't just miserable, it was practically impossible. Like fighting oneself, over and over. Hannibal had a close connection to life and it was thus inherently difficult to end.

"I'm sorry you went through that, Max. I'm sorry it came down to that at all. But it did, and if you don't process through it, piece by piece, it will weigh you down for the rest of your life. It'll hurt, and it'll be hard. Just one step at a time until you can leave your past where it belongs." By the time he'd finished speaking, Hannibal sounded rather weary. Healing took a lot of energy and, on top of that, he was medicated. Couldn't keep the pain at bay with the Force forever. He turned his head to look at max, stubbornly ignoring how his stiff muscles protested the action.

"You're a greater, kinder, and wiser man than you were then, Max. I know you can do it."

@Nefieslab

 

[Maxims Tionson]

Max knew that holding onto memories, ghosts, was bad for him and not just in the way that the old Masters of the Order would lecture him. There were anchors that people made for themselves and wrapped around themselves, to drag them down because they felt they deserved it. Max had... had kept this one close to himself for quite a long time. He knew it had held him back, in some ways, because he had made it back then for that exact purpose.

And now he felt as though he was choking on the length of chain he had made for himself.

He smiled a little bit. Max had always known that Hannibal enjoyed the act of fighting for the competitive nature and the way the adrenaline could make it all seem so much more fun than it usually was. The difference was that for Hannibal the act of causing pain was reinforced as a negative and for Max it wasn't, not in the same way. There was never a fear that Hannibal would become desensitized to causing pain but there was for Max.

Something he needed to keep an eye on? Sure but not to the extend he had been doing since the death of his Master. Since... since he had been the one to cut her down so she wouldn't do worse to others. He turned to face Hannibal and smiled, a little weakly but it was there.

"I've always known I can do it, Hans, but I tied myself up with it in the past. Just have to undo the chains I made for myself and let myself be free of them."

He looked back up at the ceiling and whispered quietly, almost quiet enough that Hannibal wouldn't be able to hear it. But he knew his friend was listening despite everything else.

"Thank you my friend..."

For now he just needed to rest.

/End Thread

@Mr. Teatime