Gert & Pap: Mustafar to Concord Dawn

[Pappy-Wan Kenobi]

He exits the fresher much cleaner than when he entered. He walks to the closet and grabs his Skivvies and a tee shirt he walks over to his Kitana, combat knife, and daggers and cleans them and oils them. He places them in their case and secures the thermal detonators and his blaster. He carefully disassembles his light saber...and calling on the Force to guide him he cleans the crystals and the power cells. Finally he replaces his vibration dampner and rebuilds the saber. He ignites it and the yellow blades light fills the room. He turns it off and set's it on the night stand next to the bed. He heads back up front to the cockpit and carries a carafe of caf to share with Gert.

[Gert Yonsz-Kenobi]

She sits at the helm of her ship, staring off into hyperspace. She'd felt the deaths of the innocent beings as the wall of light had compressed around the Sith. Some of them had been miners that had not gotten out of the facility, the rest simply residents of the planet.

Her eyes had deep shadows under them nearly the color of her grey eyes. Her mouth pulled down at the corners in tired strain. "This was not what I signed up for." she says softly to herself and memories of a valley long ago and a super star destroyer wiping out an entire town, a town she'd been unable to warn of the impending doom without having to explain that she was a Jedi in hiding.

War is chizk she thinks sourly.

As she thinks this Pap walks up behind her with a mug of caf, smelling fresh from the shower and that sours her mood more. She feels dirty, soiled. Responsible. Her tunic smells of singed cloth and other less pleasant things and it matches her mood.

[Pappy-Wan Kenobi]

He sets the caf down and touches her shoulder...."Your a veteran dear....this isn't your first rodeo. You can't look at coulda woulda shoulda.....it was a mission. The mission was to rescue the child and as a bit of luck we rescued Dodge to. The mission is always the objective and if others get in the way they pay the price. Every one there knew what they were doing when they let the Sith occupy the facility. Take no pleasure or remorse in how we accomplish our mission only in the fact that it was a success and we lost none of our team." he squeezes her shoulder to show her his support.

[Gert Yonsz-Kenobi]

"Those miners never signed up for that Pap. They were just doing their jobs. Civilians."

For the first time she looks up at him so he can see how haunted she is by their deaths. "It isn't our job to kill civilians. What good is achieving our objective if we have to take the lives of innocent bystanders to do it? It makes us no better than them."

Her frown deepens as she looks back at the blue streaks of hyperspace passing by. "It makes us no better than sith."

[Pappy-Wan Kenobi]

He takes a seat across from her and shakes his head. "And how many times during the rebellion did innocents get killed in battles the rogues were involved in where buildings were bombed and innocents were killed? " He folds his hands in front of his face and reflects on his time in the rebellion. "I was in the trenches when they flew those missions. They saw it from a thousand feet...I saw it from five feet. And by proxy you working on their ships made you as guilty as them...as guilty as I was for calling in the air strike." He sighs and puts his hands down and a hard look falls over his face. "The Empire killed those people by oppressing them and forcing us to do what we had to do to free them. Sometimes it's fate or the will of the Force that guides individuals futures. We can';t understand it or change it. We have to do as we are guided and let the cred chips fall where they may. How many more could have died if the Sith were not contained and killed? Yes innocents died...a few. But how many more would have died if we didn't stop them? The choice is yours but I feel you are betraying yourself thinking we could have done anything differently." He sits back and sips his caf.

[Gert Yonsz-Kenobi]

She sits quietly for a long time.

"A couple years after I joined the rebellion, Leia convinced General Reiken to go to a little back woods planet that wasn't happy about being part of the Empire. She was going to negotiate for supplies and military units. Vader caught wind of it and showed up with a couple of star destroyers and a battalion or two of ties. He wanted to make an example of them, show them they couldn't just offer support without punishment.

The night before he showed up, I had a force vision. The rebels would take down one of the star destroyers, hit it so hard it fell out of orbit and crash in a valley between two mountain ranges. Vader showed up the next morning, the Rogues met his ships as well as a handful of our capital ships. Your unit was long gone by the time Vader got there.

While Leia negotiated for peace we hit their ships and we hit them hard. Everyone cheered when one of the Rogues blew out the ion processors on one of the ships. Cheered until we realized how close the ship was to orbit. And then she started listing."

She stops for a long moment and her frown deepened.

"I was safe in the planetary governor's mansion as we all watched that ship list out of orbit.. right down into that valley.

Five hundred thousand people died that day, every one of them civilians, every one of them innocent bystanders that died cheering our success.

It wasn't worth the price Pap, it wasn't then, it isn't now. I could have told Leia what I know, told her who I was, I knew she would have believed me. If I had told her they would have evacuated that valley and some of those people would have lived.

I drank a lot after that. Drank to forget, drank to wash it away and eventually, I did, sort of. Luke told me if I'd admitted who I was, Vader might have had the opportunity to kill him because he'd have known he had someone to fall back on and failed. It saved more beings than you or I could possibly imagine by saying nothing, but that isn't the point is it? They still died cheering for us.

Just like those miners."

[Pappy-Wan Kenobi]

He turns away.....anger building in him. It's not darkness but a memory he wanted to keep buried...but knowing his wife needs to know sometimes things just happen and for a reason.....he decides to relive it one last time. "But in the end those people died free. And even though their lives were cut short living under oppression is no way to live. You feel guilty about something you had a vision over?" He stands his posture becomes rigid....he is amped " I never told you why I hate Ord Mantell did I? How Vader and the empire set us up trying to make the rebellion and our team specifically look like the bad guys." he starts pacing the deck "We received what we thought was intell on a "Covert" Imperial team working on infiltrating the rebellion....so we were sent in to how should I put this??? erase them. Well the plan worked like a charm we went in interrogated them. They begged for mercy and claimed they were not imps. We slaughtered them and then we left our calling card to show the imps we were on to them." He pounds his right hand into his left and is visibly shaken. "The surprise was ours when we were called before Mon Mothma and the other rebellion leaders and were charged with murder. Turns out it really was a a cell that could have supplied us with weapons and the location of the death star before it was completed. Vader found out about the leak and killed two birds with one stone and eliminated the leak and made us look bad because the imps had hidden holo cams and made sure the locals knew that the rebellion was not their friends. After the video came out the leaders realized we were duped and we were cleared."

He sits down and places his head in his hands and in a much quieter voice is heard. " I killed the people that could have led us to the death star before it was completed. But if we would have destroyed it then all it would have done was just be another blurb of a rebel attack on another imperial facility. It took the destruction of Alderraan to galvanize the rest of the galaxy to say enough is enough and join our fight to end the Empire. It's a hard call to make dear but sometimes what seems like a terrible loss can be the great gain needed to turn the tide of further suffering. Every life is precious but sometimes good and innocent peoples destinies are to have bad things happen to them in order for the greater good to not suffer under tyranny." He wipes his eyes from the tears running down his face.

[Gert Yonsz-Kenobi]

She looks at him, watches his eyes tear up as her story, the circumstances match her own.

"I remember that. Leia was pissed. She knew her unit was innocent. She was called up to your defense. And we are in agreement, Vader was a kung. But that's been pretty obvious for a few decades."

She sighs and her shoulders sag. "I know it was necessary, I don't have to like it, I don't have to just accept it. The moment I start doing that I've crossed the same line Davva and Markon and Anikin did. The moment I believe taking innocent lives is an acceptable consequence is the moment I stop thinking like a jedi and start thinking like a sith.

I'd like to have a marker put up in the system, we should pay for the families of the victims to be there, to memorialize them for the heroes they were. It won't make it less painful for those left behind but at least they will know their loved ones did not die in vain." she nods to herself. "I'll make the arrangements when we get to Concord Dawn, I'm sure I can hack into the facility's records to find out who didn't get out. Their families need to know that while the sith might have thought their loved ones were expendable, we do not."

She looks into his eyes, she still looks broody and tired but there's a firm sense of direction in her demeanor now that she's decided how to make acceptable.

[Pappy-Wan Kenobi]

He composes himself and tries to put a convincing smile on his face. "Go get cleaned up....I'll make the necessary arrangements for the memorial and compensation to the families." He reaches for his data pad and starts the ball rolling.

[Gert Yonsz-Kenobi]

She nods silently. They both have their demons. Neither escaped the Rebellion innocent. Neither had forgotten those shadows that darkened their memories. It was one of the things that had drawn them together, that understanding of each other, that acceptance of those shadows.

She stands, puts her hand on Pap's shoulder and squeezes it, she smiles down at him. The smile is slightly watery and she keeps her lips firm so they don't tremble and leans down and kisses him gently on his forehead.

"Thank you." she says simply and heads out of the cockpit and for the fresher.

[Pappy-Wan Kenobi]

He feels her kiss and watches her leave He turns and looks out the window. They say if you stare to long at the colors of hyperspace to long you will go crazy. He thinks to himself that maybe that wouldn't be so bad. He has done a good job all his life to not allow the things he has done to effect his demeanor. He has never had joy or remorse in the actions he has committed. They have always been a mission....a beginning....a middle.....and a end. Good or bad they were always just that....missions. But there have been a few when he has questioned the "Why" of it. He sees those missions replay in his head as vivid as if he was there again. He breaks out in a sweat his whole body shivers and he clenches the armrests.......he shakes his head and reaches over and hits the button to change the opacity on the window and it darkens hiding the view of hyper space. he stands shakily and heads for the galley....and Gert's bottle of Corellian whiskey.