they don't often talk about the war. carth generalizes, canderous lauds, and bastila approaches it with a distant intellectualism meant to end the conversation as quickly as possible. each offering a truth that lyn can't help but feel is incomplete. like they're being given only the border pieces of a puzzle. tidreen, they've noticed, rarely offers words of her own, but she always listens. follows along with the others in a way that feels like something more than just listening. like a measurement. [ like a judgement. ] but her truth, when she offers it, feels closer to what lyn seems to be looking for.
they seem destined for the underbelly of things — the undercity of taris, the depths of manaan, the shadowlands of kashyyyk, the few dark spaces of tattooine. secrets and uncomfortable truths live in places where they can burrow and remain unseen, and only by canvassing, cutting through the damp and dark can they begin to unravel the knots that wrap themselves around truth. whether it's another star map or tidreen's past. “ i thought i could destroy all my enemies with a single glorious victory! ” @ecsile says, but she does not sound glorious when she says it. they thinks she sounds wretched, like she's nursing a wound, and lyn aches with her.
“ glory is a lie — told to sweeten the taste of blood, to ease it down the throat. ” they say suddenly. the words come out in a strange rhythm as if repeated from another, pulled from a place in the mind they couldn't see. the empty space with the missing pieces. “ and in war it is a lie most will fall for, at some point. ” there's a hardness, a bitterness [ a regret? ] to their tone that surprises them. it feels like a memory but they're unable to place it, grasping for further wisdom but finding only empty air, and they drop their gaze from tidreen. lyn sighs, rubbing their eyes with a sudden tiredness, and is disappointed to find tension they feel doesn't leave their body with the exhale.
“ i'm grateful , you know. ” they offer. they worry it feels like a platitude but they don't think of it as one. there is a rightness, a righteousness to tidreen that draws them towards her with a kind of awe. even when she angers them there is a radiance to her. like an accretion disk hiding the black hole underneath. “ it was terrible, but it was necessary. it was victory. i'm just sorry it took so much from you. ”
