The Park, Friday Morning

[suitably_heroic]

The medic had freed Atton from his kolto bath again on Thursday morning. Another full day of observation, and he was good to go, with a bunch of patches in his pocket and an abdomen that still hurt if he bent the wrong way.

And then Mical had put him on the Ebon Hawk and sent him back to Fandom. (The Hawk was to make a point: stay there, don't come back. Otherwise Mical would've just kicked him through a portal.)

He wasn't planning to stay there. Not for long. Not with Mira out there, dealing with this problem that Atton was beginning to suspect was bigger than they'd anticipated.

He didn't bother to go back to the apartment - he didn't want to run the risk of running into Sparkle just yet - but stumbled down the stairs and walked down to the park.

That alone was probably more exercise than he should've given himself. He winced at the sound of his own breath as he sank down on a bench.

Space.

[[ open! ]]

Comments

[suitably_heroic]

Atton frowned. "No," he said, "That word was already in use back when Exar Kun started the war before all of this happened. Turned from the Jedi and declared himself Dark Lord of the Sith. And I'm pretty sure he had some old Sith Lord rattling around his brain. Mical'd know more."

[spectre_alenko]

"'The war'?" Kaidan asked.

You guys had so many, it was hard to keep them straight, really.

[suitably_heroic]

"Yeah, the war before the Mandalorian War," Atton said, waving, since clearly the 'before all of this happened' hadn't landed right. "The one that scared the robes off of the Jedi. We had a few decades of peace after that, it was nice."

[spectre_alenko]

"Sounds like it was some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Jedi goes bad, goes to war against the others, that war ends, the surviving Jedi refuse to get in a war, which sends one of their own over the edge, then he comes back and starts a war with them," Kaidan said.

Honestly, Jedi, WTF.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton tilted his head.

"Nah," he said after a moment. "Exar Kun was just an asshole."

[spectre_alenko]

"Revan wasn't?" Kaidan asked, curious more than anything. Honestly he was kind of on Revan's side.

He knew how he'd felt when the Council had failed to listen or act the number of times John had warned them what was coming.

[suitably_heroic]

"He pitched in when the galaxy needed him. He came in, he saved us," Atton said. "It wasn't a power trip, at least not at first. Maybe it never was."

[spectre_alenko]

"I guess it would be hard to know. It's not like you could really ask him questions after he'd been mind-raped into oblivion," Kaidan said.

He had feelings about that. Lots of them. Complicated, mostly negative.

[suitably_heroic]

"From what I hear, he remembered eventually," Atton said. "Jedi like their dirty little secrets, but they can't keep them forever. He left, though. Not long after that."

[spectre_alenko]

"They're lucky he was that generous. I'm not sure I would be, if that had happened to me," Kaidan said, "Especially not if I remembered."

"Totally fine, violating someone's mind and sending him back against people who were pissed off that the Jedi let people die, but slavery? That's too penny-ante to bother with," he said a minute later, a muscle in his jaw tensing and flexing, "Thank you for telling me all this. That.. is not something I would have wanted to blunder into with her."

[suitably_heroic]

"Who, the Twi'lek?" Atton said. (He hadn't told even half the story, but he was happy to leave it until Kaidan picked it up again.) "Couple thousand more years to go, remember?"

[spectre_alenko]

"Asking her about a planet and a people that've been slave-raided is probably not something I want to ever do," Kaidan said, "I don't like to see my friends upset. I can imagine this is right in the 'upsetting' bank."

[suitably_heroic]

"Probably," Atton agreed. "At least it looks like she managed to get out okay. You know, from a distance."

[spectre_alenko]

"She's alive, she's free, and she's not there," Kaidan agreed tightly, "There's that, at least."

[suitably_heroic]

"You really get worked up about all this stuff, don't you?" Atton said casually, tilting his head. "See a lot of injustice in your life? Or are you just one of those guys who goes crazy when the world doesn't look the way he thinks it should look?"

He was betting on the former.

[spectre_alenko]

"Little of column A, little of column B," Kaidan said dryly, "I've seen enough, and in spite of it, I want to believe that people are, as a whole, basically decent. Multiple universes seem to be going out of their way to make me think otherwise. It's annoying."

[suitably_heroic]

"Or maybe you're just naive," Atton said.

[spectre_alenko]

"Possible," Kaidan agreed calmly, "We had slavery in my galaxy too, so it's not all sweetness and light, but on the whole it seems less outright miserable than at least two others."

[suitably_heroic]

"What, no wars raging where you come from?" Atton said. "'Miserable' usually depends on what part of your galaxy you're standing in."

[spectre_alenko]

"Not anymore," Kaidan said, eyes darkening a moment until he shook it off, "Before the war I was in, the last one was when humans first discovered space travel. They didn't realize there were other species out there who had prior claim to certain territories. It was more a giant misunderstanding than anything else, and it didn't last very long. Skirmishes, sure. Every galaxy is going to have its 10% of assholes, and we had the Batarians."

He really didn't like Batarians.

[suitably_heroic]

"But your galaxy only has the 10 percent, so you have to come to me to get your pound of moral outrage so you can feel good about yourself," Atton said. No judgment.

Well, some judgment.

But Atton was bad at breathing without judging people.

"That's comfortable, right?"

[spectre_alenko]

"My war involved flying around the galaxy fixing a bunch of inter-species skirmishes that would never have happened if the species involved had been able to get their own heads out of their cloaca long enough to evolve a minimum of empathy," Kaidan said wryly, "Considering that there was a galactic threat, worlds burning, and the species involved still weren't able to pull their heads out long enough to concentrate on the larger problem, I really don't need stories of your galaxy if I want to get my moral panties in a twist."

"It's not some sort of oppression olympics," Kaidan added, "Hearing about the horrors of some other galaxy doesn't make me feel good. It makes me wish there were something I could do to lessen them. It makes my heart ache for my friends who came from there, and it makes me glad that they survived it without becoming monsters."

[suitably_heroic]

Atton let out a soft snort.

"Space, I get it, you are such a karking Jedi," he said.

[spectre_alenko]

"No, from what I understand, I'd be the exact opposite of a Jedi," Kaidan said, tilting his head a little, "They're taught to suppress emotions. Not to get angry, not to feel fear. That's not what I was trained to do at all."

[suitably_heroic]

"You're like the Jedi because you have that righteous do-gooder attitude going on," Atton specified, waving his hand at Kaidan. "The whole suppressing emotions thing, that's just the trick the old guard used to avoid exploding and killing everybody."