fifthbeatle: (powered)
Viktor Hargreeves ([personal profile] fifthbeatle) wrote2021-01-10 01:11 pm
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[For Obi-Wan]

The night is dark. Vanya is alone.

She's out in the woods somewhere - maybe the forest behind "'Leonard's' Grandma's house." It's so dark she can barely see what's in front of her. The wind is howling, screaming, almost whining. A clap of lightning rings through her head, so loud the sound vibrates through her teeth. The sound seems to crash into the whining sound. It's the clear resonance of a pitchfork now, only it's so loud Vanya's on her knees. Her knees hit the damp earth below with a wet slash, like her bow slicing through Allison's neck. She begins to sink into the mud below. It gurgles: the sound of Allison trying to breath. Pain rips through Vanya's head. She hunches over and clamps her arms tight around her head to block the sound.

Silence. Stillness. Now, the ground is hard and cold. Vanya lifts her head.

A window. A small sliver of a window behind a thick metal door and a pressurized lock. She looks up and sees the soundproofing foam sloping toward her like stalactites. She tries to hear something. Anything. There's nothing. As she gets to her feet, her soles don't make a sound on the floor. She calls out, but nothing happens. Even as she launches herself at the door, desperate to hear the smack of her hand on the window, there's nothing. She thinks she's breathing, but she can't hear it and she can't feel it. No air is coming into her lungs. It's like she floating in space with no helmet and she reaches for the pills in her pocket and pulls out a small wooden dinosaur. Harlan's toy. Her eyes go wider. The beat of her heart the sound of clothes rustling - it's all gone until the little wooden toy floats up from her hand. It glows sunlight yellow and emits a shrill sound. The light and the sound grow in intensity. No, no, no she can feel it. She's not breathing and she can't move and -- BOOM.

When the legs of her bed jolt up off the floor and land back down, Vanya wakes with a huge gasp for air. Everything is just out of place, knocked over. The mirror in her room is cracked. The little chair in the corner of her room has been spilled over. He body is aching, tight all over. As she jumps out of bed to check on her siblings, she catches the stark white of her skin and eyes in the fractured reflection.

This time, she thinks, she was lucky. No one was badly hurt. She wants to believe there won't be a next time, but she can't.

Vanya never goes back to sleep. She's waiting for the sun to rise and to make sure that none of her siblings are up before her. She makes the coffee and breakfast as usual, but instead of curling up to read, she stalks out to the woods. She's got her weird little mobile phone in her pocket. If something happens, she's going to be okay.

"Leonard" tried to train Vanya out of Reginald's notebook - a method that had failed spectacularly once already. Each of them were sociopaths and narcissists and Vanya can find pride in failing them. If there's one thing Vanya knows, it's study and if she can tune resonance into energy, isn't she a violin? Her love of music, her ability to make it is the power she gave herself. There is no one better suited to honing her powers than her own self.

This sustains her for about two hours. She's found a little clearing where there are fewer precarious-looking branches and sharp, spiny things that she could hurt herself with. She's a good half-an-hour walk into the woods, so she has no reason to believe anyone else is around. She's doing this right, she thinks.

In this small valley, there is an apex at the center with a rock. There sits Vanya, her legs crossed loosely beneath her, floating rocks and moss and a couple of branches around her. There's an impression in the dirt where she's managed to move larger objects with some success, but they never land quiet where she wants them to. It seems like she might be getting tired and maybe a little hungry. Without realizing it, she's following her father's principles, the ones that let her down in the first place: push faster, harder, longer. Break yourself and then go further. It is the only way to achieve greatness.

Which is not what she ever wanted. All she'd ever wanted was for her family to love her, to be one of them. And she was meant to be. Now she knows she was. She was never ordinary. Ordinary.

Ordinary. The word snaps something in her like a branch. Yes, she can feel it, a thick, loud crack like the trunk of a tree has been somehow separated. It's a heavy feeling; one she doesn't know if she can catch if it falls.
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[personal profile] larger_world 2021-01-24 04:23 am (UTC)(link)
It's not a question Obi-Wan needs to consider for long at all. The Jedi are lifelong teachers, as well as lifelong pupils and he thinks there is much he can learn from Vanya, as well as much he can teach her. That she's receptive, that she wants to learn, it speaks well to her intentions, although Obi-Wan knows there is a large gulf between desire and action.

The power within Vanya is not the same as the power Obi-Wan has access to. The Force is something else, but at the end, it's all energy, and he can't condemn someone to suffering just because their abilities are different.

"I know you don't," Obi-Wan answers. He can sense that in her, even if she hadn't told him to run, even if he hadn't seen it in her eyes just now. He gives her shoulder a gentle squeeze before dropping his hand and then he nods. "I'll help however I can. There are many Jedi teachings that deal with emotion; learning how to accept what we feel and let it go rather than fight against it or let it overwhelm us is at the core of everything we do. These strong emotions, they're not bad things. It's only when we let them control us things can get beyond us."

He smiles again, just slightly, then says, "Which is a long winded way of saying, yes. I'll try to help."
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[personal profile] larger_world 2021-01-27 04:54 pm (UTC)(link)
"Man-friend," Obi-Wan echoes with a warm laugh. "Yes, alright, I can accept that title."

He and Klaus have never had a conversation attempting to specifically define what they mean to one another and Obi-Wan is comfortable with that, at least for the time being. There are no illusions that exist between them and he's well aware whatever form their relationship takes, it's not the same as one might have been had he left the Jedi order for Satine. Obi-Wan knows, however many other people may or may not catch his eye -- and admittedly, there are very few -- his heart has already been spoken for in a way it hasn't in a very long time.

There is no comparison between Klaus and Satine but for how they've made him feel.

"Does it help at all to know most of the people I've met before Darrow were usually trying to kill me?" he asks, his smile growing at he looks over at Vanya, then begins to walk toward the city proper once more.
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[personal profile] larger_world 2021-01-31 03:40 am (UTC)(link)
"I told you that where I'm from there are people who are sensitive to the energy around us," he says. "We call this energy the Force and those of us who are trained to properly wield it are called Jedi. The Jedi, about ten thousand of us in all, were tasked with being peacekeepers for our galaxy, but in the three years before I arrived here, the galaxy was in the midst of a war."

He pauses, considering how best to tell this story, then says, "We had a Galactic Senate. Any planet that wished to be part of the government, the decisions, they were welcome to have a representative in the Senate. It was democratic and while it was far from perfect, it was fair. Someone was working to undermine the entire system. To overthrow it. At first they were called the Separatists, but in the end, there was a single man at the root of it all. He wanted to make himself Emperor."

This is a story a few people in Darrow know, coming from the same galaxy, but it's not a story he's told in such broad terms. Klaus knows he was a general, he knows many of Obi-Wan's stories, but he's not sure he's ever explained the entirety of the war. It's much more broad and much less personal, but it explains a great deal.

"They had an army of what we called battle droids. Not particularly intelligent opponents, but easy to build," he says. "I spent three years as a general in the Grand Army for the Galactic Republic. There was always someone trying to kill me and my men."
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[personal profile] larger_world 2021-02-03 02:14 am (UTC)(link)
"He turned out to be what we call a Sith," he answers with a nod. "One who has a connection to the Force, but has turned to the dark side of it for power. One who has been corrupted. And he was a master of manipulation."

Obi-Wan can't dwell for too long on Palpatine. The man's betrayal, the ways in which he had used Anakin, abused his trust, they're things that still anger Obi-Wan, things he has yet to reconcile during his meditation. Now is not the time to focus on it, not when he's still working through it himself.

Instead he smiles a little and says, "Before the war, it meant any number of things. We once went to a planet called Pijal, where a terrorist organization on the moon was apparently threatening the Crown Princess, though as it turned out, an arms manufacturer was framing the group on the moon. We were tasked with protecting Princess Fanry and unraveling what was happening there. Another time my Master and I were went to the planet Mandalore, while they were on the brink of a civil war. In that case we went on the run with their Duchess for an entire year, making sure the opposition to her rule couldn't reach her."
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[personal profile] larger_world 2021-02-03 07:23 pm (UTC)(link)
"Oh, I doubt anyone would want to read that book," Obi-Wan answers with a smile. He loves to read, is voracious in his appetite for words, especially since coming to Darrow and finding any entirely new world worth of literature and history and science opening up before him, but he very much doubts he would have any sort of writing ability.

Besides which, he's not sure how many people here can read Galactic Basic.

"It was a difficult shift," he agrees. "Though I'm trained in all kinds of combat, I much prefer to avoid violence wherever possible. I would rather try to work things out with words and negotiations, but in the midst of a war, there is truly little time for discussion."
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[personal profile] larger_world 2021-02-07 08:49 pm (UTC)(link)
"Hm, I should think not," he answers. "They're not likely to make jokes or smile."

As they walk, he tucks his hands into either sleeve of his robe and shakes his head. "You really needn't apologize. Sometimes things are overwhelming, difficult to comprehend without time to sit with what you're experiencing and consider. That very thing is a big part of why I believe meditation is so important for Jedi. And for anyone, truly, who is looking for a bit of self-reflection and understanding."

There's a lot to be said, he believes, for learning how to control your strong emotions instead of letting them control you.
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[personal profile] larger_world 2021-02-12 03:46 pm (UTC)(link)
In Darrow, Obi-Wan is rarely truly busy. He finds things to fill his time and he especially likes the library when he isn't with Klaus or Anakin, but beyond daily meditation, something that has been with him for as long as he can remember, he has no real routine to speak of.

Every so often he considers that he may have to get a job of sorts. Not for the financial gain, of which he has little interest, but simply for the structure of it and the feeling of contributing to a functioning society. For a man who has existed his entire life within the service of keeping the peace for an entire galaxy, to be without a purpose is especially difficult.

So at Vanya's suggestion that she might be keeping him from something, he shakes his head and smiles. "You'll find I'm never particularly busy," he admits. "I suppose first I ought to ask if you've ever tried meditation at all. I know from Klaus it's something that's known well enough in your world, but not something everyone has tried."
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[personal profile] larger_world 2021-02-14 11:11 pm (UTC)(link)
"It is," Obi-Wan agrees. "And it's about awareness. A lack of judgement when it comes to your own inner thought process. The way we're first taught as younglings is that we find a comfortable place to sit, in a position that's both stable and something we can maintain from between five and ten minutes."

There are times when he can't believe just how short his first meditation sessions were. He understands why it's preferable, that people will never be able to learn if they're expected to sit still with their own mind for an hour or two immediately, but these days Obi-Wan rarely meditates for under an hour.

"Then," he says. "We close our eyes, find a comfortable position for our hands, and we breathe. Pay attention to the inhale, the exhale, focus on that, be aware of that. And every time we notice our mind has wandered, without judgement, we return our focus to our breath."
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[personal profile] larger_world 2021-02-15 10:04 pm (UTC)(link)
"It takes practice," Obi-Wan answers. "And your mind will wander. The part you shouldn't judge is the wandering itself, not the thoughts. Don't chastise yourself for not being able to focus better, don't tell yourself it's impossible or that you can't do it. Your mind is endless, there's no sense trying to stop it from being exactly what it is, but when your thoughts drift away from your breath, gently bring your focus back and keep going."

He smiles then and says, "We can't not feel our emotions. They exist, they're part of what make us who we are. Emotions give us our compassion, our ability to love, to be kind and thoughtful. The goal isn't to not feel them, but to stop letting them control us. The Jedi are warned that anger is a path to the dark side, but what is really meant is that anger that controls us, anger that makes our decisions for us, that can lead us to the dark side."