EVENT ▸ RETURN TO HQ

[futurologists]

RETURN TO HQ After a tough mission, it's time to return to Headquarters for a well-earned rest. Hathaway's medics and healers are there to patch up any lingering injuries (as are any teammates with healing abilities!), everyone's room is tidied up for them, and the entirety of Hathaway HQ is ripe for exploring. Take your time -- you earned it. Also sharing downtime at HQ are Guilds Horatio, Montague, and Watchman, composed of humanoids of various shapes and sizes. Temporary pop-up shops down in the promenade include a spa where one can get a manicure, pedicure, or other beautifying procedures; a yoga studio; and an imported salt cave for meditation. After a few days of silent relaxation, members of Guild Ophelia will all receive a text message on their magitek from Imogen -- their Guild Master, if they don't remember. Imogen, while not directly involved in any world-saving affairs, has a rather sizable amount of inheritance that she puts towards the Hathaway cause. Specifically, she uses it to finance Ophelia's endeavors. This sort of makes her in charge, or as much in charge of this rag-tag team as any one person can be. Hello, Ophelia! Once again, allow me to congratulate you on your successful mission in Hanabira. I hear the wedding went smashingly. Hathaway's analysts should rift down someone to check in on your success in several years, but the mathematicians are confident your solution has brought peace to the region. One should never rest on their laurels, however. From what I've seen in magitek messages, this guild is sorely lacking in the ability to work together and trust all guildmates, regardless of who they are. I've spotted more than a few barbs exchanged. Hanabira will be only an exception if you continue to behave this way. We'll be conducting guild bonding exercises today. While they are not mandatory, I assure you I've procured incentive for you all to participate. It isn't cheap to finance your exploits, and I won't spend my resources on a group of ruffians slinging insults at each other. Meet by the memorial fountain in one hour, and do try to bring a positive attitude. Your Guild Master, Imogen Those who choose to participate will find Imogen, a very prim and graceful elf dressed in elaborately embroidered robes, standing near the fountain. She greets everyone by name -- "nice to see you" and "glad you could make it" -- before directing them to the training rooms on the upper deck. The training rooms include run-of-the-mill exercise equipment and the training simulation room, both of which are free to use by participants and non-participants alike. A tall, strong-looking man whom some may recognize as their recruiter is making use of the equipment. His name is Khalef, and he is happy to answer questions about the training facilities or anything else about Hathaway. Between exercises, Imogen is available at the memorial fountain to chat but she's otherwise busy with paperwork. ▸ SECRETS Two partners sit in a room furnished only with two (very comfy, if it matters) chairs and a table between them. On the table sits -- floats, really -- a colorful orb, softly glowing. It is comfortably warm to the touch. The instructions automatically flash across the participants' magitek, thanking them for participating and asking them both to answer the following questions with complete honesty to gain the most from this exercise. Then, the first question pops up: What is something you like about your exercise partner? It seems simple enough. If a participant tells the truth, they will notice the orb's glow brightening, almost as if it is starting to flame. If a participant lies, they will notice the orb's glow dimming. Otherwise, there is no penalty for lying. The questions slowly get more personal, with the aim of getting the two partners to open up to each other: If a crystal ball could tell you the future, what would you want to know? What’s the one thing you would like to change about yourself? What are you most proud of accomplishing? What do you think existed before the universe was created? What do you think is the worst crime a human could commit? Do you think jealousy has value in driving people to improve themselves, or is it a purely negative emotion? If you could start your life over, what would you do differently? If you were given only one week to live, how would you spend it? Who had the greatest impact on your life? What was it? What’s the difference between justice and revenge? Is it possible to live a normal life and not ever tell a lie? Do the ends justify the means? Are some people’s lives worth more than others? Why or why not? Complete this sentence: "I wish I had someone with whom I could share..." If a loved one died, but someone created a perfect copy, would they be the same person and would you love them just as much? If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know. ( Mod note: the above are just ideas! You can pick and choose, or come up with your own. Whatever is most fun for you! ) If the two partners truthfully answer their questions, the orb will eventually catch fire, although it will curiously still remain only pleasantly warm if anyone attempts to touch it. It will blaze until it burns out, leaving two small marble replicas in its place. When one of the partners grasps it in their hand, they will be able to see through the other partner's eyes for one minute (although they will not be aware of their own surroundings, so you might want to be in a safe area). The other partner will be aware of this and able to sever the link by removing the marble from their person. These items are bound to their owners and cannot be used by others. If one or both partners lie, the orb will eventually fizzle out entirely, and the magitek will inform them that the exercise was failed due to deceit. ▸ RIFTING Next, guild members are directed to the rifting pad located on the upper deck. Technicians scurry about in the rifting area, spinning dials and taking readings, as volunteers are directed to stand on the rifting pad and wait. It's just like rifting to a different universe for a mission -- the world goes bright and then, in a flash, you're standing somewhere else -- except the technicians emphatically explain this is not a mission. It's still part of the training exercise, you see! Participants have been rifted to an unpopulated garden planet, in the middle of a forest clearing. The grass is tall -- nearly 150 cm in height -- and is surrounded on all sides by forest. A notice pops up on your magitek that informs you there is no aggressive local wildlife, but there are aggressive plants: including, unfortunately, your goal for this part of the exercise. Spread throughout the forest are aggressive willow trees, sentient flora that will lash out with sharp, clawlike branches at anyone who comes too close. The branches have incredible reach, but the trees have no other defense, and are rooted to the spot so they are also unable to maneuver. The goal of the exercise is to gather as many willow seeds as possible, ostensibly without hurting the trees themselves. Willow seeds are around the size of a small marble and have a fluffy attachment that will allow them to blow away on the wind; you can scour the forest in search of them, of course, but the highest concentration is below the willows themselves. Once participants feel they have gathered enough seeds -- or if they simply want to give up -- they need only speak to the rift technicians via magitek and they will return back to Headquarters immediately. The participants will each receive a pot of soil and a seed to plant within it. The plant that sprouts from it will be no ordinary plant; it will require no water to sustain itself, but it will require something else: friendship. As the relationship between the two participants strengthens, the plant will grow, its appearance representing how the other participant feels about the plant owner -- pink and red blooms may represent romantic love, whereas bright, multi-colored petals may simply represent a strong friendship or budding blooms may represent... well, a budding friendship. (Of course, there's no "flower guide", so it's up to them to decide how to interpret this.) As the relationship weakens, the plant will wilt and, if the relationship turns sour enough, die. So take care of your relationship and take care of your plant! ▸ COMPOSURE This exercise completed, participants are free to return to the first deck and go about their business. But on the elevator back down from the rifting pad, the elevator suddenly jerks violently and then stalls. You're stuck! The emergency button doesn't seem to be working, no matter how many times you press it. And for that matter, no messages seem to be going through the magitek, either. You're effectively trapped in here with whomever you stepped aboard -- a friend, an acquaintance, or even a stranger. But don't panic -- surely Hathaway hired you for your ingenuity and not just your pretty face, right? The elevator can be broken out of in a number of ways: If you brute strength the doors open, you'll find that the elevator is stuck halfway between floors. This means that you must either climb up or down to escape the narrow opening, and, if your partner isn't the athletic type, help them out as well. If you hack the elevator's control panel (prying the panel door off first, obviously), you may be able to guide it up and down the shaft. Depending on your expertise in this sort of thing, the ride may be jerky and uncomfortable, and there's always a risk of the elevator plummeting down to the bottom if you lose control -- although strangely, there's never any impact if this happens, only the elevator springing back up the shaft after the fall. Either way, you should be able to figure out how to get the doors open. If you open the access hatch at the top of the elevator, you'll be granted access to the elevator shaft. It's a dimly lit tunnel of cables and wires, and unless you're lucky enough to find a service ladder in the midst of all of it, you'll have to use the cables to climb. It's dangerous -- you could lose your footing at any moment and slam back down onto the elevator below -- but you should be able to find a door eventually. And then it's only a matter of figuring out how to get it open. Or you could try a combination of these, or something entirely different! No matter what method you choose, once you find your way onto solid ground, your magitek will light up: Congratulations! You passed the final exercise. Rest assured, you were never in any real danger, I promise! Your Guild Master, Imogen Indeed, if you found yourself falling too far down the shaft, you would have found yourself instantly buffeted by invisible winds to keep your landing soft -- and if you found yourself unable to find a way to escape within two hours, the elevator would automatically start up again. Those who succeed will receive a flashlight that does not seem to work at first; however, it is capable of taking and storing light from its immediate surroundings, which it can then release into similar light sources or, in the absence of those, floating orbs of light. It is incapable of taking light out of an entire building, for an example, but can darken a room. ▸ OOC NOTES If you have questions about this log, please direct them to this comment on the plotting post. Questions about the game in general can be directed to the FAQ. ▸ Up now: Hanabira Bounty Board is still open! Bounties must be turned in by the start of the next mission on 15 April. Congratulations, Guild Ophelia now has an official uniform! The uniforms may be modified in any way characters like. The FAQ and Headquarters pages have been updated to include the uniform information. ▸ Coming next: 25 March: Mandatory How's My Driving meme. Participation is required to pass March AC. 28 March: April calendar, including news about apps. 01 April: March AC begins, ending on 5 April 23:59 UTC. ▸ Plotting ▸ Hathaway Headquarters ▸ Hanabira Bounty Board ▸ March Calendar

Comments

[sololoquy]

[Somewhere in between her lecturing, Kylo Ren has turned away to pace, working his jaw with obvious frustration and maybe a twitch of fear. Thrawn was not someone he wanted as an open adversary. He was not like most of the rank and file he encountered — not even the old relics that had fled the Empire’s fall to join the First Order. He was smarter, and knew what to do to get what he wanted.

And now that he knew they were onto him, he would work harder than ever to make sure he succeeded. At least, that’s what Kylo would do — so it must be what Thrawn would do too.

He eventually stops pacing to grip the nearest surface until it creaks under his strength. He is silent for a few moments.]

What he told you — about the Viridian Sea.

[If he doesnt make attempts to engage in discussion he’ll just start breaking things again.]

It is true. I refused to entertain his questions about you. And again, in Hanabira.

[But Rey — Rey couldn’t keep her damn mouth shut.]

[forcevisions]

[ It's hard not to succumb to her instinctual emotional response to this admission, to keep herself at the pragmatic distance she has been asking him for. But her loneliness and self worth issues have gravity as strong as his anger, and while he'd confirmed this once before, he had not declared it so openly.

He'd protected her. That makes the guilt worse, too. He'd been protecting her from the very beginning, and she'd been the one to cause these problems — with Keith, with Thrawn — by doubting that and refusing to accept what she could see instead of hear.

She swallows the dryness in her throat. ]

He didn't mention it until Hanabira. [ Which means he'd held onto it for weeks, supporting her belief that they don't need to worry about him instantly going to spread the bond around. ] Not until he saw my power. [ It's been some time. The specifics are hard to grapple for, but— ] When he did, I told him only about Starkiller, and in broad terms. If he gleaned anything from it, it must have been the same as your silence — that he drew conclusions not from what I said, but the way I said it.

[ Though she keeps her voice level, her face feels hot. She hadn't been aware enough of exactly what her feelings were to even think about looking for markers of something else, and Thrawn was quite good with people. ]

I indicated that I'd assumed you'd told him everything about me, and that I couldn't give him much information about you. That's not enough even for him to gather what he said today. [ And because Ben couldn't hear, she gives him the exact words — or a clearer summary of them: ] He said he'd noticed a connection in your evasiveness despite our positions in the war, but couldn't see more. And that when my 'true focus shifted,' he could see clearly that we were 'alike in mind.'

[ But she can see he's barely restraining himself from lashing out now. In addition to watching the tabletop creak and sigh under his grip, she can feel it like heat across the bond. ]

Do you want to do this in the training center?

[ She shouldn't ask, given her current churning emotions and the way the last time had gone, but asking him to slow down and work through this with her is asking a lot, and if taking that anger out on her is going to help him set it aside — well, she deserves it. And she can certainly handle it. ]

[sololoquy]

[He doesn't hear her request, too busy trying to unravel the information she has given him. "Alike in mind"? What did that even mean? He couldn't even liken it to anything he's heard someone say in his past, as he is usually able to. It is simply -- bizarre. He starts to shake his head, though whether that's in response to her question or the information she's giving him is hard to say.

He had wanted to avoid talking about Rey to others not because he had been interested in protecting her -- at least, not entirely. He'd been doing it to protect himself, which makes Thrawn's conclusion twice as confusing.]

He was fishing.

[He had to have been. It was the only way. And she'd taken his bait because she was unable to lie.]

There is no other conclusion to draw.

[He pushes himself off the table and it makes a horrid sound as it grinds across the floor. Slowly, his mind catches up to her previous offer.]

No. We risk an audience there.

[He'd been in his room because he didn't want to see people.]

[forcevisions]

[ Rey's gaze drops as he pushes himself off the table, feeling thoroughly … scolded. The more insistent he becomes about this matter being settled, the more she feels him twisting the knife into her failure. Like he won't be satisfied until she buckles under the weight of it. Her jaw sets, the muscles there tensing briefly as she tries to swallow it down. ]

I don't need you to tell me this is my fault. 

[ She's too aware of it. Maybe she hadn't made that clear enough. Maybe he's just waiting for her to apologize and prostrate herself, but that isn't going to happen. It might be her fault, but given what Thrawn had said, it felt inevitable. She isn't going to sit here wallowing in self-loathing for it.

Except it's clearly nagging at him that she had been the one with the power to hand Thrawn this. It makes sense, when she tries to examine it from Kylo's perspective. This bond which he'd never had a choice in gave him a weak point over which he had no control. Though she'd promised to protect him, the very nature of their connection meant that she made him weak. Her weaknesses and shortcomings opened him to his enemies.

If he could, he would probably sever it and leave her in a heartbeat just to eliminate that weakness, kill the bond as he had killed his father. He wouldn't know the fear she'd felt when for a moment Gram had disconnected her from him. Only the bond kept him from turning away from her. Was it any good, if that was unwilling? This sticks in her mind for a moment. But … It doesn't quite take root.

Perhaps because he'd tried already. He did turn her away, reject her, and he had come back in earnest with offers of compromise. If he really wanted to be free of this thing, he would not let it stop him from an attempt, but with the exception of that night in Doro's castle, he hadn't made one. And he wasn't asking for that again now.

This heartens her. He isn't pulling away. She lifts her gaze, feeling a little more confident. ]

But it's more than that. [ She knows it is. She's not going to just … bend. ] He asked if you could hear us. Before he had ever mentioned you, without me ever looking at you. He knew. [ She's sure of that — and it's not just defensiveness, as she has surrendered some of that instinctual need to clam up and protect herself. He's not going to leave her.

Still … it makes her wonder. Thrawn had only seemed to ascertain it in that moment, from something that he saw during their game of Highland Challenge. ] We can take the entire memory of the game from him, but it's just a patch. [ A patch she's willing to apply, to be clear, but she won't mince the temporary nature of that solution. ]

[sololoquy]

[She concedes to his request some and he relaxes just slightly.]

Even if you are right, I don't know how he could have known. A patch is our best solution.

[The tone he takes indicates that he doesn't want to explore it -- he just wants to patch it. The long term solution could be found later. Right now, they had to fix it before he made contingency plans against forgetting.

But finally, he turns around to face her again. She'd verbally acknowledged that it was her fault -- it didn't really make him feel any better, even if some part of him had hoped it would. But he'd also be lying if it was nice to feel like he wasn't the failure here, for once.]

We would have to wipe his entire memory of us both to make absolutely certain.

[His tone indicates that he knows she won't approve of that plan, so it isn't exactly a proposal, but permission for her to offer alternate solutions...because he doesn't have his own.]

[forcevisions]

[ That escalated. She's not necessarily surprised that he pushed it to the greatest extreme, but— It still stands out. At least it seems like he knows such an overreaction is off the table for Rey. It puts her at ease to know that he's at least … aware her boundaries exist.

The bar's really in the center of the Earth here. ]

Or we pull the answers from his mind and discourage him from further probing. [ She hates this suggestion, even as she provides it. Somewhere in there is the straightforward truth of where Thrawn pulled this from. Either of them could likely pull it out, and they're wiping his memory anyway, and— Even this feels like spiraling into something Dark though it is undoubtedly the most effective choice. And he had threatened her friends.

This is what Thrawn would do. She's sure.

She searches him openly, clearly struggling with the feeling that this is the best option, but nonetheless anchored in the necessity of it. Maybe he is not the right person to seek reassurance from. Maybe his affirmation will only make it worse. ]

All of this assumes he has no way of blocking or fighting us. [ She doesn't feature reliving Starkiller but from Kylo's side of the interrogation. ] If anything goes wrong, we'll have made it worse for ourselves.

[sololoquy]

It cannot get worse.

[He delivers that simply, brows pinching.]

He believes he has evidence of both our connection and our intent to prevent him from reaching his goals. What other reason does he need to act upon his knowledge?

[Because Kylo Ren himself certainly would. Almost everyone he knows would push an advantage like that. That, of course, is why he'd prefer to just erase any avenue to allow him to do so.

He does not even want to entertain the thought that Thrawn might be too strong of will to manipulate.]

[forcevisions]

Knowing we will stop him and knowing we will tamper with his mind are two different things. If it doesn't work, if for some reason we fail, he could go to Hathaway.

[ She doesn't have an incentive, but Ben does. She's not positive what it is, but she does know it has to do with this conflict inside of him. It's worth noting this could get them kicked out, and could cost him that. ]

And he'll see us coming. The moment he sees us together, he'll know what's happening.

[sololoquy]

[The gears are turning, and his frown deepens as the rest of his expression begins its slow collapse into frustration. He had noy even thought that Thrawn might go to Hathaway over this — perhaps because Loki and Keith had chosen not to. As such, he doesn’t bother to remind her that both of them were not required to complete the task of removing memories. It only needed to he one of them.

But with that knowledge in hand — they are stuck. And with no way away from his mounting anger, his fists curl again, and he directs his eyes elsewhere, disappearing back into his own head to try and work through a solution that doesn’t exist.

Stopping him from succeeding and stopping him from exploiting what he’s since acknowledged as a weak point might have been mutually exclusive, but if they left him with that information in hand—]

[forcevisions]

[ Rey reaches for his arm — the movement is slow, lest she catch him off guard while he's retreating into himself like this, but nonetheless deliberate and focused. Steady. She squeezes his upper arm. It's a quiet gesture. She speaks as she does it so that her mollycoddling doesn't draw too much attention to itself. ]

We don't need an answer right now. He will not turn to open aggression immediately. I'm sure of that. [ Surer now after their game. And because Ben had just insisted Thrawn had everything he needed to act, she pushes forth, ] I know him pretty well.

[ This admission hurts. She knows him because their connection had been genuine and intimate. She had lost that. Admitting it means admitting she had failed because she is a lonely and desperate person, but … Ben already knows this. So she doesn't flinch away from the truth. ]

If we trust in the Force, an opportunity to measure his mental defenses will present itself. [ This is her solution to not knowing how to ascertain them subtly — yet. 'Trust the Force.' She's very good at being patient, once she sets aside her own impulsive instincts and resigns herself to doing so. ]

[sololoquy]

[Perhaps it is a good sign that he doesn't react when she finally makes contact with his arm. Or perhaps he is so lost within his own head that he doesn't even notice it. But there is a slow unwinding of tension that gets him to loosen the hold on his own fists.

All her admissions are things he already knows. There is something to be said that she isn't trying to make amends with Thrawn, in spite of the strange relationship they had apparently formed.

But "Trust the Force" is something a Jedi would say, so he throws her a look for it. He might not have a better answer, but he doesn't like the way she says it.]

I will not waste the opportunity, if it presents itself.

[He doesn't need to "trust the Force" for that.]

[forcevisions]

[ Watching the tension ease out of him feels gratifying. Because it makes evident what she had already acknowledged, maybe — that she is not merely some burden he wishes he could shrug off — or maybe because it means he has accepted the truth of what she says. Either one appeals to her.

Despite the way he unwinds, and despite that look, she doesn't move her hand. ]

Good.

[ Honestly.Testing his defenses in some way would be the only way to ensure their plan to delve his mind and remove his memories would work in the first place instead of exacerbating things. She just hopes that when the time comes, Ben remembers that he needs to test them subtly, not throw himself headlong into The Plan. ]

We'll beat him. We just have to be smart about this.

[sololoquy]

[Something about her confidence jogs his thought process.]

Or...we find something to hold over his head in turn.

[The idea comes to him in a flash, once he has calmed down some. If they had something of his that they could turn on a dime, then that would keep them on even playing field in theory -- assuming Thrawn honored the terms of engagement, to which there was no guarantee.

But two could play Thrawn's game, in theory. If they could find a weak point of his own. Rey claimed that she had known him, so he focuses on her again.]

You said you believed you knew him. What could we use?

[forcevisions]

I don't know. I'm not in the business of using people's weaknesses against them.

[ She's not a user, so she hardly feels like she knows what kinds of things to look for. Maybe she wouldn't say this so casually if she knew about Ben's conversation with Loki, but as it is, she just moves on from it to continue brainstorming. ]

I know that he can strike through stone and run faster than humans. I know about his past — he spoke of it freely with me because it was much like mine.

He had nothing when he came to the Empire; even before he was their prisoner, he had nothing among his own people. [ This she offers uneasily, finally lowering her hand and looking away as though she has the good sense to be ashamed of how easily they had bonded over this. She moves on from it eagerly. ] The Empire captured him in the Outer Rim after he had been exiled by them. That was the end of the Clone Wars.

He talked about the Clone Wars a lot, and how the greed, corruption, and chaos that the Galactic Senate allowed through its failure and idleness gave birth to the Empire. That, to him, was an evil greater than the Empire. He knew that the Emperor was a monster, but it didn't stop him; he believes in their cause, and …

[ She looks up at Ben again, feeling maybe there's something here that she can't quite reach. ]

He believes in the other officers of the Empire. He has people that he cares about. He mentioned their compassion. [ She frowns. It's an incomplete picture. ] I don't know who or how many, though.

[ By itself, none of this sounds useful to her. But then, by itself, she doesn't see value in knowing about the bond between her and Ben either. So maybe he will see something she doesn't. ]

[sololoquy]

[Perhaps fortunately, he doesn’t draw that line to Loki’s lecture and lesson. Instead, he focuses on some of the similarities between the aftermath of the Clone Wars and the rise of the First Order. It is not surprising to him that Thrawn had chosen to focus upon that — the history of the galaxy, rather than his own life. That prevented the very thing trhey were currently attempting. Nevertheless, he listens and digests.

She gives him something — nothing usable, of couese. There was nobody else in Hathaway from his time. If he had compassion for some others in his rank and file, it would do no good here.]

No names. No descriptions.

[He shifts his jaw again, the way he did when he was in deep thought.]

We can acquire those things, with time. Some of them may even still be with the First Order.

[He sounds a little smug about this. All those Empire relics, under his command — including people like Thrawn. It makes him feel better about the whole situation.]

[forcevisions]

[ He takes joy in that, and it turns Rey's stomach. As much as she wants to stop Thrawn, she also takes umbrage with Ben's malice. Better if he were doing it for different reasons than revenge. She's not in a position to lecture him about that right now, however. ]

If we can show they survived the fall of the Empire, we may be able to discourage him from all of this. [ It's a pipe dream and she knows it — his commitment to the cause is too powerful —but she has to at least entertain it. She wants compassion to be the right answer, even when it's not. ] He may have mentioned more to Poe, but ... It's unlikely. He told me that he and Poe hadn't spoken about anything pertaining to politics.

[sololoquy]

Your scenerio in which Thrawn forgives all of this is equally unlikely, I imagine.

[Just saying.]

And I cannot appeal to his sympathies without names.

[Even with names — it wasn’t like he spent much time with the rank and file. He knew some of the older generals, certainly...but those without major achievements in the Empire? No way.

He pauses, and then lets out a shaky exhale.]

It looks as if we are stuck.

[forcevisions]

Not stuck. Just waiting.

[ And she sounds confident in that, at least. They have a direction: testing Thrawn's mental defenses, investigating the specifics of Thrawn's emotional connections within the Empire. That's worth something to her, if not to Ben. ]

Taking time to learn more about him now will help us stop him in a way that matters more than just taking his knowledge of our connection. [ Her voice takes on a quality of gentle reassurance as she punctuates this conclusion with, ] This is good. We have a plan.

[sololoquy]

I do not see the difference.

[Too bad that nothing matters more than that — at least right now. Kylo Ren wasn’t exactly a long term thinker, and its clear that he is not nearly as satisfied by this plan as Rey seems to be.

More importantly, she’s still holding onto his arm, and the extended physical contact is suddenly brought to the forefront of his mind. Rather than reply to the Thrawn situation, he lets his eyes drop downward to her hand.]

[forcevisions]

[ She follows his gaze and feels a surge of heat in the back of her neck and ears. Is this his way of saying she should move it? No. He'd just say that, or pull his arm away. Which means he's just considering it. ]

This way, we're on equal footing. A plan is all he has too.

[ But talking about that seems distant and settled now, so the words hang awkwardly in the air. He's moved onto her hand on his arm.

She slides her hand down, skimming the slope of his arm all the way. While moving, she's not quite decided if she's getting ready to let go or something else. She figures it out when her hand closes in his and she lifts his hand to take a look at his injuries — and if this most recent tantrum exacerbated what would otherwise be mostly healed by now. ]

[sololoquy]

[His hand is tense when she gets to it, slightly resistant to her prying -- not because the trust isn't there, but simply because he's unhappy with the present events. His hands lack their bandages -- not long after returning to Headquarters, he had gone to get his injuries properly seen to. Most of the evidence of the injuries is gone -- just a few light scars where the glass had gone the deepest.

By the end of her observation, the stiffness in his fingers has relaxed some -- but every other piece remains tense.]

Maybe the next mission will play more to our strengths. Instead of diplomacy.

[Leia Organa's son or not, he has no delusions of being particularly skilled in that area.]

[forcevisions]

[ The tension in him does not appear to have any meaningful effect in dissuading her. She brushes her thumb across the scars on his knuckles as he speaks, considering them. He'd done it to himself, yet they still feel like more to the map she has etched into his skin, with new waypoints added all the time. ]

You did alright for yourself. [ Between the festival and the marriage proposal, Ben had at least had the tools to navigate the situation. He may, like her, lack skills in the department of — well, people — but he understands what's going on with them. How the structures work.

Thrawn was supposed to help her with that. She doesn't want to dig into that. He doesn't want to dig into that. But the loss is hitting her properly now where it had felt somewhat distant before. She'd gotten too attached, too quickly — again.

She lets that go, lets the loss move her and then moves past <>it. ]

Those pearls were a good idea. [ She looks up at his face instead of at his hand. Reluctantly, she lets his fingers slip out of hers. ] And with the ambush at the festival.

[sololoquy]

[She's...fiddling with his hands. He doesn't quite understand what she is doing, or why she is doing it. Surely she didn't feel responsible for something he had done himself, even if she was mostly to blame for it. By now, he's drawn the conclusion that she feels guilt rather easily -- but this seems to be a little much.

So -- what? Academic curiosity? No...its not curious exactly. But the Force is a poor translator.

He absorbs what she says to him while he tries to decipher what more they have to discuss, eyebrows pinching in confusion. Not that anything she said was wrong but--]

You're flattering me.

[That's definitely a call out, by the way. Maybe she doesn't realize it.]

[forcevisions]

[ His accusation draws her up short, and something in her flares with an instinct to defend herself. Maybe she should point out some of the stupid things he'd done on the mission too — but he's already keenly aware of his shortcomings in diplomacy, and they're less than her shortcomings in politics, so. She doesn't really see any benefit down that path. At least no benefit that isn't tinged with hypocrisy. ]

I'm pointing out that you weren't entirely useless. [ She huffs it out. Honestly how dare? It's not like she doesn't think he's capable; if she didn't, this entire conversation wouldn't be a Thing. But apparently one of the rules she didn't know about is that she isn't supposed to say so. Directly, at least. Which is stupid. But stars, his ego apparently is doing just fine for itself, so she backs right the fuck outta there.

She'd assumed because he hadn't tried to shoo her out the door, because he had instigated talk of the next mission, that he wanted her to linger like this. But— ]

Do you want me to go? [ Like, she doesn't want to. Asking probably makes it further evident that she doesn't want to. But she'd come here to a purpose and now that purpose was dealt with and now she's socially awkward. ]

[sololoquy]

[Oh. He said something wrong, probably. His expression relaxes some, trending back to awkwardness. It is easy for him to forget that — someone actually has genuinely nice things to say to him, sometimes. Still, it sounded like flattery. He is pretty sure it was flattery.

The bar is positioned somewhere at the center of the earth. When someone corrects you after you have acknowledged your failures: a concept.]

No.

[Was it a rhetorical question? He answers like he isn’t sure whether or not she is looking for a real answer herself.]

If I wanted you gone, I would have told you to leave.

[Duh.]