"The Kaminoans are an aquatic species, plus they think they're better than everyone else in the galaxy, so they're probably too good to go live on some inferior planet." He shrugs, still looking out at the peaceful lapping of waves on the shore in fascination.
"It was safe enough, though. It flooded thousands of years ago, the cities are never actually threatened by the storms anymore, if they ever were." He still hates the flash of lightning or booming thunder, though, that ran through his childhood nightmares like a constant reminder of artillery fire.
"Man, are there any species that don't think like that? Even mine does." Granted, hers is at the top of the food chain, but they're still endangered.
She looks out at the ocean here, how flat it is, glittering in the low sunlight. "Nah, though, this place is my speed. I'm glad you like it. There's nothing like just walking and- Hey! Boots off. Trust me."
"You're probably right." He doesn't admit his does as well, mostly because they're not supposed to even identify as a separate species, let alone consider themselves superior... despite having been told they are their entire lives. And there's nothing to be gained by telling her the Kaminoans play with lesser species like toys, manipulating their genomes to suit, then selling us off as products across the galaxy.
He looks down at his booted feet at her instruction and frowns. He doesn't even take his boots off to sleep most nights, and the idea of being barefoot, and that much more vulnerable to an attack, goes completely against both his nature and training. But... adapting. Compromising.
"You're sure?" he asks anyway, still skeptical... but he's also sitting down on the sand--so soft, and warm--to pull them off. Which still leaves him in his vacuum sealed black bodysuit, no bare feet to be seen. Or hands, for that matter.
"I want to be able to say it's bullshit, but there's a part of me that knows it's not really." She gives him a guilty, apologetic look. But seriously, kill one person with your bare teeth and you start to rethink your place in the world.
She puts her hands on her hips when she sees his feet (or rather doesn't), all guilt forgotten. "Nuh-uh, that's not gonna do. You need these," she lifts a foot and waggles her toes. Her bare toes. "Show me some skin, boss."
"That your species is superior?" he asks, head cocked slightly.
But then he's looking down at her bare foot, then his decidedly not bare foot, then back up at her face, expression skeptical. Compromise, he reminds himself... and maybe just a small part of him doesn't want to disappoint her when she seems so happy. So after a moment he runs the controller in the palm of his gauntlet over the vacuum seals above his ankles, allowing him to peel off his foot coverings very much like socks--exceptionally thick, sturdy, vacuum-tight socks--to reveal unnaturally pale, slightly hairy feet. Given his otherwise dark complexion, they've clearly never seen the light of day.
He sinks them into the warm sand with a surprised huff at how nice it feels without any barrier in the way, and sets about neatly folding his 'socks' and tucking them away in one of the pouches hanging from the the belt he wears his blasters on. "Is your home like this?" he asks, hesitating for a moment before he repeats the entire process with his gauntlets and tucks them away as well. His hands aren't quite as washed out from lack of sun, though they're a good few shades lighter than his face.
She nods, just a tiny movement, because yeah. That. But she doesn't want to give the idea any more validity than it already has; she doesn't want to start seeing her friends here as rivals or prey. She's seen where that goes.
She grins at him, at that huff, and bounces a little on the balls of her feet so she can feel the sand all over again as her soles touch down. "Nice, right? This is part of the experience, you can't miss out on it."
She leads him down a ways, shows him how their feet leave brief marks in the damp sand, how good the dry sand feels after the chill of the wet.
"Yeah, it's a lot like this. But if I made the Enclosure show my home, there'd be a big smoggy city behind us, and people crowding the surf. Sometimes I miss it, but there's nothing like a private beach."
He pads along in her wake, fascinated and uncomfortable by turns: being barefoot feels ridiculously vulnerable. But the warm sand between his toes and even the cool, damp sand barely giving under foot, is like nothing he's ever felt before.
"Amazing," he answers, and he can't help grinning at her, quick and bright in a way that smooths out the harsh lines of his face and wipes away years from his appearance, making him look almost boyish. "Is the ocean always like this where you're from?"
He's breathing deep, starting to find all the ways to differentiate the warm salt air here from the overpowering stink of the sea outside the domes on Kamino. Everything about this place is gentler, milder, the scent of sun-warmed plant life mingling with the smell of the ocean in a way that he could never mistake for the cold, sterile inhospitability of his putative home world.
"Most of the time," she nods. "If there's a tsunami or an earthquake we get some pretty bad waves, and some parts of the world get hurricanes that turn all that into a trap. But where I'm from? Yeah it's smooth."
She watches him here and there, stealing peeks at him, grinning when she sees he's really getting into it all. There are plenty of other ocean lovers on board, but few who let themselves breathe and taste and feel it all like it's brand new.
"Did they teach you to swim? Or was it too rough there?"
Mostly, he has trouble forgetting where he is and why he's here, that his brothers back home are fighting and dying while he's here, safe, but this... it actually is brand new for him, and so far beyond his experience and so utterly captivating that he can't help but lose himself in it, at least for a little while.
At first he walks a perfectly straight line, almost like he's marching along the beach, but after a while he weaves closer to the water, lets it wash up over his bare feet before stepping hurriedly back to avoid having to wash salt out of his blacks. Though he steps back down to the water line again when he realizes how pleasantly warm it is compared to the cold ocean waters of his childhood. He digs his toes into the sand and crouches, fascinated, to turn over a sand dollar or watch sand crabs scuttle back down into the sand as the water recedes.
"It's beautiful." There's real awe in his voice as he tips his head up to look at her, still crouched down in the sand. "Oh, yes." He frowns a little, and it brings the lines back, adds years to his appearance again as he remembers. "Rough didn't matter, you don't get to choose your conditions in combat, after all." He shrugs, and looks back out to the sun sparkling across the tops of the swells and low surf. "Our squad was lucky, though, we got the dying end of a storm on our day. CC-23-0481 still didn't make it." He hadn't had a name, they'd been too young, had yet to find the courage to claim even that little bit of individuality for themselves. "Swimming here might actually be... nice." Maybe. It's hard to associate swimming, or anything to do with the water, with pleasure, but this place is so tranquil and beautiful that it might actually be possible.
"Oh. I mean...that's a good point and all, but if I'd learned to swim like that, I probably would've hated it." And that would have erased such a large part of her, where she finds her sense of peace and stability.
So when he says it might be nice she grins up at him in surprise and delight. "I bet you'll like it. And surfing. It's even more fun than swimming but you have to know how to keep yourself from drowning to do it."
With this in mind she steers them toward a cove. "You don't have to answer anything personal, but- when did you pick your names? If your brother didn't have a chance to...?"
"I think most of us did," he agrees, and feels a little bad to realize he's marred this beautiful place with talk of death. It's such a normal, constant part of his existence, has been since his earliest memories, that it mostly doesn't occur to him that it might be out of place. But he looks at Annie in her bare feet and impractical clothes, her easy manner and happy smile, and resolves to try and remember as he continues to pad along in her wake.
"I can swim in full armor, I'm pretty much drowning proof," he answers, wondering just what surfing is but more focused on answering than asking right now.
He doesn't expect her next question, it's not something most people seem to think or care about. So many don't even acknowledge their names in the first place. "It... varies," he answers quietly, drifting back towards the water again and its unaccustomed warmth. "Most of us didn't dare for a long time, at first, and if we did we kept them to ourselves and our batchmates, in case it was considered an aberration."
He crouches down again, water washing over his incongruously pale, bare feet, and lets the surf wash over a piece of shell he's found, rinsing the sand away to show the luminous mother of pearl lining it. "I didn't choose mine until I was... nine, I guess. Maybe ten." They'd only ever tracked their age in the vaguest of terms, their stage of training had always been more important, and even now he's guessing to say he's thirteen, it could just as easily be twelve. It doesn't seem very important most of the time. "It was just before we deployed, anyway. My whole batch chose our names in the last standard week or so before we graduated."
"A lot of shinies show up to their first posting still just going by their numbers." And so a lot of them die before ever claiming even that tiny sliver of individuality for themselves, but he remembers not to say that this time, and instead tips his head to look back up at her, smiling faintly and holding the scrap of shell out to show her, the mother of pearl gleaming in the sun. "What makes it like this?"
"Shinies," she echoes with a grin, "I like that. It'd fit my new brothers. Most of them still go by their birth names...but we all pick new ones sooner or later."
However, those who are quick to pick a name, or those who take a year to do it, it doesn't matter--there's no pressure. Nothing that would make them an 'aberration'. But maybe there are plenty of things that made her pack weak-
She shoves the thought away hard and looks at his hand, letting herself sink into this moment instead. "I have no idea! I think it's something to do with the secretions of what lived in the shell? I could be so wrong, though. But it'd make sense, since that's what makes pearls. Me, I know what makes tides and when a storm's coming a week away, and how to hunt anything that moves. But smart stuff, I'm pretty bad at that."
She unbraids a bit of leather from her hair and hands it to him. On the end are flecks of shells, mostly mother of pearl like that one. "For you."
"Because their armor's still so shiny and clean," he points out, pleased at the response. More pleased even at how she takes his explanation in stride, the facts of his life just facts to accept and move on from. "It's best, I think, to be able to pick your own name, to have one that means something to you." And he actually grins back, a quick flash of teeth and warmth that doesn't fade entirely when he shifts his attention back to the scrap of shell.
"That sounds like smart stuff to me." He's not just trying to bolster her ego, that's the kind of practical knowledge he respects, the kind of smart that helps keep people alive.
He looks up again, startled, when she offers him the length of leather, and rises quickly back to his feet. He doesn't even know what he'd do with it, but he finds his fingers itching to run over the surface of the shells dangling from it. "Are you sure?" He looks back at her, uncertain.
"I picked my name," she confides, "I don't know if my real one's going to be in my file, when I get a permanent warden." She trails off, and adds, "What are you going to do when you get a file to read? Will you just read it and keep it, or tell the inmate?"
She's smiling though, smiling at his praise, and that he's uncertain but clearly he's going to appreciate the gift for the same reasons she had when she made it. "I'm sure. It's yours. Consider it a reminder that there are beaches like this one, and a million shells and stuff to find in it."
"Then Annie is your real name," he points out stolidly, because as far as he's concerned it's as simple as that. He doesn't see why a name she doesn't want given to her by someone else is any more her 'real' name than a number given to him for tracking purposes by the Kaminoans is his.
He doesn't answer her question immediately, instead reaching out to take the strip of leather and its sparkling string of iridescent shards in careful hands. He runs broad, blunt fingers gently over each one, feeling the texture, comparing the rough outer shells to the smooth mother of pearl on the inside. "Thank you," he murmurs roughly, looking back up at her again. He's been given so few gifts in his short life, and nothing like this. "I'll remember."
He tucks it with almost excessive care into one of the pouches on his belt before going back to considering the question she'd asked. "I think... it would probably be more useful to discuss whatever information is in the file with my inmate," he finally answers, slow and deliberate like he's considering the answer as he goes. Which he is, and the conclusion he's reaching is far different from what it would have been had he been asked back when he'd first arrived. "If my job is to help someone else change, then keeping information from them that might indicate what it is they need to change wouldn't be of much help."
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2017-02-02 12:24 am (UTC)"It was safe enough, though. It flooded thousands of years ago, the cities are never actually threatened by the storms anymore, if they ever were." He still hates the flash of lightning or booming thunder, though, that ran through his childhood nightmares like a constant reminder of artillery fire.
no subject
Date: 2017-02-02 02:13 am (UTC)She looks out at the ocean here, how flat it is, glittering in the low sunlight. "Nah, though, this place is my speed. I'm glad you like it. There's nothing like just walking and- Hey! Boots off. Trust me."
no subject
Date: 2017-02-02 04:25 am (UTC)He looks down at his booted feet at her instruction and frowns. He doesn't even take his boots off to sleep most nights, and the idea of being barefoot, and that much more vulnerable to an attack, goes completely against both his nature and training. But... adapting. Compromising.
"You're sure?" he asks anyway, still skeptical... but he's also sitting down on the sand--so soft, and warm--to pull them off. Which still leaves him in his vacuum sealed black bodysuit, no bare feet to be seen. Or hands, for that matter.
no subject
Date: 2017-02-07 03:40 am (UTC)She puts her hands on her hips when she sees his feet (or rather doesn't), all guilt forgotten. "Nuh-uh, that's not gonna do. You need these," she lifts a foot and waggles her toes. Her bare toes. "Show me some skin, boss."
no subject
Date: 2017-02-07 03:59 am (UTC)But then he's looking down at her bare foot, then his decidedly not bare foot, then back up at her face, expression skeptical. Compromise, he reminds himself... and maybe just a small part of him doesn't want to disappoint her when she seems so happy. So after a moment he runs the controller in the palm of his gauntlet over the vacuum seals above his ankles, allowing him to peel off his foot coverings very much like socks--exceptionally thick, sturdy, vacuum-tight socks--to reveal unnaturally pale, slightly hairy feet. Given his otherwise dark complexion, they've clearly never seen the light of day.
He sinks them into the warm sand with a surprised huff at how nice it feels without any barrier in the way, and sets about neatly folding his 'socks' and tucking them away in one of the pouches hanging from the the belt he wears his blasters on. "Is your home like this?" he asks, hesitating for a moment before he repeats the entire process with his gauntlets and tucks them away as well. His hands aren't quite as washed out from lack of sun, though they're a good few shades lighter than his face.
no subject
Date: 2017-02-07 04:09 am (UTC)She grins at him, at that huff, and bounces a little on the balls of her feet so she can feel the sand all over again as her soles touch down. "Nice, right? This is part of the experience, you can't miss out on it."
She leads him down a ways, shows him how their feet leave brief marks in the damp sand, how good the dry sand feels after the chill of the wet.
"Yeah, it's a lot like this. But if I made the Enclosure show my home, there'd be a big smoggy city behind us, and people crowding the surf. Sometimes I miss it, but there's nothing like a private beach."
no subject
Date: 2017-02-07 07:16 am (UTC)"Amazing," he answers, and he can't help grinning at her, quick and bright in a way that smooths out the harsh lines of his face and wipes away years from his appearance, making him look almost boyish. "Is the ocean always like this where you're from?"
He's breathing deep, starting to find all the ways to differentiate the warm salt air here from the overpowering stink of the sea outside the domes on Kamino. Everything about this place is gentler, milder, the scent of sun-warmed plant life mingling with the smell of the ocean in a way that he could never mistake for the cold, sterile inhospitability of his putative home world.
no subject
Date: 2017-02-14 01:59 am (UTC)She watches him here and there, stealing peeks at him, grinning when she sees he's really getting into it all. There are plenty of other ocean lovers on board, but few who let themselves breathe and taste and feel it all like it's brand new.
"Did they teach you to swim? Or was it too rough there?"
no subject
Date: 2017-02-14 04:10 am (UTC)At first he walks a perfectly straight line, almost like he's marching along the beach, but after a while he weaves closer to the water, lets it wash up over his bare feet before stepping hurriedly back to avoid having to wash salt out of his blacks. Though he steps back down to the water line again when he realizes how pleasantly warm it is compared to the cold ocean waters of his childhood. He digs his toes into the sand and crouches, fascinated, to turn over a sand dollar or watch sand crabs scuttle back down into the sand as the water recedes.
"It's beautiful." There's real awe in his voice as he tips his head up to look at her, still crouched down in the sand. "Oh, yes." He frowns a little, and it brings the lines back, adds years to his appearance again as he remembers. "Rough didn't matter, you don't get to choose your conditions in combat, after all." He shrugs, and looks back out to the sun sparkling across the tops of the swells and low surf. "Our squad was lucky, though, we got the dying end of a storm on our day. CC-23-0481 still didn't make it." He hadn't had a name, they'd been too young, had yet to find the courage to claim even that little bit of individuality for themselves. "Swimming here might actually be... nice." Maybe. It's hard to associate swimming, or anything to do with the water, with pleasure, but this place is so tranquil and beautiful that it might actually be possible.
no subject
Date: 2017-02-15 05:45 am (UTC)So when he says it might be nice she grins up at him in surprise and delight. "I bet you'll like it. And surfing. It's even more fun than swimming but you have to know how to keep yourself from drowning to do it."
With this in mind she steers them toward a cove. "You don't have to answer anything personal, but- when did you pick your names? If your brother didn't have a chance to...?"
no subject
Date: 2017-02-15 06:41 am (UTC)"I can swim in full armor, I'm pretty much drowning proof," he answers, wondering just what surfing is but more focused on answering than asking right now.
He doesn't expect her next question, it's not something most people seem to think or care about. So many don't even acknowledge their names in the first place. "It... varies," he answers quietly, drifting back towards the water again and its unaccustomed warmth. "Most of us didn't dare for a long time, at first, and if we did we kept them to ourselves and our batchmates, in case it was considered an aberration."
He crouches down again, water washing over his incongruously pale, bare feet, and lets the surf wash over a piece of shell he's found, rinsing the sand away to show the luminous mother of pearl lining it. "I didn't choose mine until I was... nine, I guess. Maybe ten." They'd only ever tracked their age in the vaguest of terms, their stage of training had always been more important, and even now he's guessing to say he's thirteen, it could just as easily be twelve. It doesn't seem very important most of the time. "It was just before we deployed, anyway. My whole batch chose our names in the last standard week or so before we graduated."
"A lot of shinies show up to their first posting still just going by their numbers." And so a lot of them die before ever claiming even that tiny sliver of individuality for themselves, but he remembers not to say that this time, and instead tips his head to look back up at her, smiling faintly and holding the scrap of shell out to show her, the mother of pearl gleaming in the sun. "What makes it like this?"
no subject
Date: 2017-02-25 11:56 pm (UTC)However, those who are quick to pick a name, or those who take a year to do it, it doesn't matter--there's no pressure. Nothing that would make them an 'aberration'. But maybe there are plenty of things that made her pack weak-
She shoves the thought away hard and looks at his hand, letting herself sink into this moment instead. "I have no idea! I think it's something to do with the secretions of what lived in the shell? I could be so wrong, though. But it'd make sense, since that's what makes pearls. Me, I know what makes tides and when a storm's coming a week away, and how to hunt anything that moves. But smart stuff, I'm pretty bad at that."
She unbraids a bit of leather from her hair and hands it to him. On the end are flecks of shells, mostly mother of pearl like that one. "For you."
no subject
Date: 2017-02-26 05:30 am (UTC)"That sounds like smart stuff to me." He's not just trying to bolster her ego, that's the kind of practical knowledge he respects, the kind of smart that helps keep people alive.
He looks up again, startled, when she offers him the length of leather, and rises quickly back to his feet. He doesn't even know what he'd do with it, but he finds his fingers itching to run over the surface of the shells dangling from it. "Are you sure?" He looks back at her, uncertain.
no subject
Date: 2017-02-28 04:54 am (UTC)She's smiling though, smiling at his praise, and that he's uncertain but clearly he's going to appreciate the gift for the same reasons she had when she made it. "I'm sure. It's yours. Consider it a reminder that there are beaches like this one, and a million shells and stuff to find in it."
no subject
Date: 2017-02-28 06:30 am (UTC)He doesn't answer her question immediately, instead reaching out to take the strip of leather and its sparkling string of iridescent shards in careful hands. He runs broad, blunt fingers gently over each one, feeling the texture, comparing the rough outer shells to the smooth mother of pearl on the inside. "Thank you," he murmurs roughly, looking back up at her again. He's been given so few gifts in his short life, and nothing like this. "I'll remember."
He tucks it with almost excessive care into one of the pouches on his belt before going back to considering the question she'd asked. "I think... it would probably be more useful to discuss whatever information is in the file with my inmate," he finally answers, slow and deliberate like he's considering the answer as he goes. Which he is, and the conclusion he's reaching is far different from what it would have been had he been asked back when he'd first arrived. "If my job is to help someone else change, then keeping information from them that might indicate what it is they need to change wouldn't be of much help."