Perspective Adjustments

by Jedi Knight VN Ysadora

Katunda
31 Nelona
12731

a.k.a.

1008:05:31 RR

When I finally detached from Port Etmar report-seeking long enough to tromp onto the Night Sparrow, I heard Davish before my eyes adjusted to the light spectrum.

"Ah, there you are," Davish said. "I'm glad to finally be home."

Sometimes he says the most romantic things -- like that his home is not a place, but wherever I am.

"Here's what I want to do," I told him. "I am going to take a twenty minute sonic. Unless we're forbidden by your current medical instructions, I intend to spend the next half hour scandalizing the Republic. And then we can both take another sonic, put on clean clothes, chuck every non-weapon thing currently on me or in my overnight bag into the cleaner, and finally I am going to eat two and a half rations' worth of actual food. With caf. At which point, we can compare notes on the trivial parts of our life."

Smiling, Davish assured me, "I already have the caf dispenser and the stewpot prepped."

Scandalizing the Republic went very well indeed. We needed that second clean-up.

By the time we wandered back out, I was sure someone had been through the galley -- the insulating mitt hung from a different hook, the stack of bowls in the rack was no longer an even number, the seasoning rack looked tidier than Davish or I usually leave it. Someone else must have made it back here, fueled up, and gone off to their own bunk.

Once we both had a few sporkfuls of stew into us, I started our intel-exchange in the wrong order:

"I tried out So'Zen as an ethics and perspective advisor. Not his jam. He made the supportive noises but his later actions contradicted. Or invalidated, anyway."

"Nobody is good at everything," Davish said, "thank goodness. What is your ethics thing?"

I told Davish about the Codex. And the lousy "reading for comprehension" emails from Vondromas when I asked about a disabling procedure. And Vondromas' dramatic doomspeaking. How that made me wonder, does this thing actually have a circumstance for which it is suited?

"Because here's the thing: my documented, consistent reaction to aggressively destructive people or objects has been 'don't get fussed, just chuck it into the nearest late-series star and move on.' I tend to get overridden on that -- can't dispose of the creepy black hand, can't stuff the invasive poison weed transplants into the mulch machine, can't go around shooting Lieutenant Zorad just because he's a domineering ass. I feel like, more often than not, this has been a fair rebuttal to my pragmatism. No living creature is just one thing, sure." I pointed toward the stewpot with my spork to find out if Davish wanted more; he did not. "So here we are, actual grown-up knights, I ought to be responsible and patient and so forth. Especially given the Sith tradition of doom-flailing in the face of this whatsit. Is it bad ethics to give it a chance? I presented the idea to So'Zen as if I am firmly on the side of everything being good if it's properly situated. He nodded along but when we got into the crime scene, he went straight to eradication. Which might mean that when I asked for a reality filter check, all he heard was blither."

Davish thought about that while I refilled my bowl.

"You're sounding kind of pollyannaish on the ethics thing," he said.

I sighed. I resumed my seat at the galley table. I plunked my spork into the bowl to see how fast it would settle to the rim.

"I have more than 'knight order' grounds," Davish said. "The potential for a redemption arc is not a linear ray, with 'waste of time' at one end and 'worth the effort' at the other. An entity has to be willing to do some of the work on their end to seek a healthier situation. You can't redirect the willfully bratty, you know?"

I did, indeed, know.

"Don't set yourself afire to light the way for others. If people never choose to reach for hope, that is on them. And some beings will only ever reach out in order to snuff the hope. You have as much right to not get snuffed as anyone else."

There's a part of me that wanted to argue against this.

It is probably the same part of me that bothers Jenkins so much.

"I knew that," I said slowly, "but I needed to hear it from someone else. Hence the reality check. Thanks."

We ate in comfortable silence for another few minutes.

"Why the test run of Sparkle Sparkle Goggles, then?" Davish asked me.

I was quiet for a while.

"Chaplain Ysadora does okay," I told him. "Either in the right, or at least in a useful consultant mode, about eighty-five percent of the time." I put my spork down in the empty bowl. "Jedi Knight Ysadora receives another 'you got that wrong' just, so often in comparison. I am not going to give up being Jedi. I know who I am. But when the galaxy keeps swatting another error buzz in my direction every time I do any sort of religion-based deduction ... and the Dark Side keeps trying to lay traps that consist of other people's suffering ... I cannot stick my fingers in my ears and balk. What matters is the result I want, not how I present myself."

Davish reached across the table to pat my arm.

"Don't let them badger you, hon. When you do your thinking under the Jedi cap, I promise, you are wrong a normal percentage of the time." He smiled a little. "Maybe less often than the statistical average. You do look for pertinent factors!"

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Perspective Adjustments

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