There is a scratch mark on the floor of the Council chambers that Mace has never noticed before. Not a deep one, mind, quite shallow. This matters because it’s making the white-hot pulse of agony stabbing through his eyeballs ebb momentarily. Then, he chances a glance upwards at the fidgeting Knight in front of them, and it returns in full force.
Huh, he’s never seen Oppo Rancisis’ face turn that colour before.
“Hmm”, Master Yoda hums, deep and scratchy. His expression is unreadable even to Mace beyond a baseline gremlinness, and the force with which he grips the edges of his seat is making his bones creak. Master of the Order you should become, they said. Follow the calling of the Force, you should. A fulfilling purpose, it will be. Mace is going to hunt the little goblin for sport when this is all over, and he’s going to laugh the whole time.
“Show us the livestream again, could you, Knight Parvo?” Yoda asks. Mace bursts a capillary, he’s pretty sure, and so does poor Knight Parvo, whose orange Mon Cala skin tips all the way into blood red with stress. “Most unusual, this is.”
“Absolutely not!”, Ki Adi intervenes before Mace has to, thank the Force for little mercies. Plo Koon’s tusks tremble slightly with either suppressed laughter or abject horror, maybe both, and Stass Allie has her head in her hands. “The holo stills should be enough”, Ki Adi proceeds to add, and Mace has to reconsider all feelings of grace he just felt towards his fellow Councillor.
He never wants to watch Yoda zoom in on someone’s abs again. Or Depa raise her eyebrows at the curve of thighs bent over the dripping front of a speeder.
“Speeder Wash For Our Troops”, his former padawan reads out loud from a still of what has to be hundreds of the things gathered in the public senate parking lot. “Fund Our Boys And Get A Wet Seeing-To!” The series of images features dozens of Coruscant Guard troopers in various stages of unkitted, gleaming and shining with soap suds and water. The fact that the whole thing is also massive shatterpoint after massive shatterpoint is, quite frankly, insulting.
“Well hello- oh dear”, Obi-Wan’s blue form crackles to life in his chair, followed by several sounds of choking that are definitely not him. Good, Mace thinks acidly. If he has to deal with this, then so does kriffing Skywalker. “I’m sorry, why am I looking at Commander Thorn using a washrag like a lasso on top of a speeder?”
“Oh, the Guard’s little fundraising project”, Bail Organa says, as he steps into the Council chambers. Normally, Mace likes the man well enough. Now, he just smiles and adds on, “I’ve already donated, in mine and Breha’s name. Remotely, of course.”
“The Guard’s fundraising speeder wash?”, Obi-Wan repeats, edges of his holo form flickering with what Mace suspects is Skywalker very unsubtly trying to edge in. Force, but the man really is horrible at any and all stealth, like kissing his secret wife in an open arena in front of his Master. “And they are fundraising for…?”
“GAR budget allocations have to come from somewhere”, Organa shrugs. “And with the tide of public opinion turning, they’ve been tending towards cuts. The Guard feels them more keenly than any other sector - they’ve been reduced from half to quarter rations, and medical supplies have not made more than a token appearance in the last draft. The Chancellor has cancelled three consecutive meetings on the matter, and thus it was agreed that a more hands-on approach was needed. Any surplus will go into the Army fund.”
“Surely it can’t be that dire”, Oppo protests, a slightly less concerning shade of purple now. Senator Organa shrugs again, jostling the smattering of cracks slowly building around his person in a way that makes Mace wince quietly. “It’s all publicly available data, Masters.”
It really can be that dire, as it turns out. And quarter rations is only scratching the surface of how dire, considering the Guard has apparently never had access to bacta in all their posting, and also includes requisitioning forms available to the Senate for reconditionings and decommissionings, two words Mace has only heard Ponds whispers amidst shuddering in the early days of the war before Shaak Ti went off and just about tore some throats out over it.
“Alright”, he concedes, rubbing at his temples. “Fair enough, we have failed to tackle a massive blind spot in the Guard’s well being. There is no Jedi assigned to Coruscant, and that’s an oversight on our behalf. But how in the everloving kriff did this get past the Chancellor and Commander Fox?!”
Who have both signed, black on white. Bail Organa smiles cryptically. “Well, if you scroll a bit past that one image, up to the industrial speeder in the back - Commander Fox is currently having credits stuffed into his codpiece in the back, I believe.”
“HE’S WHAT IN THE WHAT NOW”, Commander Cody screeches through the speaker of Obi-Wan’s holo image, and Mace has to summon every bit of Jedi-serenity he possesses in his body to keep from dropkicking a cackling Yoda through the chamber windows.
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Do you ever think about thiam and be like ‘damn we really could have had it all if they made those two losers canon’ because shipping thiam sometimes is so fucking ridiculous sometimes because I really don’t know if me and thousands of other people are all just collectively looking at these two with rose-tinted glasses and think they’re in love or that they actually LOOK at each other like that. What do u mean Liam literally brought theo back from hell? And was one of the only people who fought tooth and nail for Theo to stay out of it? What do you mean that Theo quite obviously became Liams anchor when Hayden left? What do you mean that Theo CONTINUOUSLY saved Liams ass over and over again after being shown as a selfish and deceitful person throughout the previous season? What do you MEAN that they parallel a CANON couple? What do you mean that most all of Theo’s smile are because of Liam? What do you mean that Liam became Theo’s grounding person since he doesn’t need an anchor(Liam said Theo’s name in that scene and Theo snapped out of the hallucination of Tara I’m going crazy)? WHAT DO YOU MEAN THAT THEY LOOK AT EACH OTHER SO LOVINGLY AND YEARNFULLY AND BEAUTIFULLY?????? WHAT DO YOU MEANN???
Do u ever think about thiam because I do
Like the context of thiam is so insane how were they not canon im going crazy
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I'm sorry, I just really need to get this thought out, but what one of the reasons why I am so affected by Ivan's death is the underlying emotions behind it. It's been constantly shown throughout the narrative that Ivan was infatuated with Till, but the nature of their relationship was that Till had never noticed him.
I believe that Ivan was fully aware of Till's feelings for Mizi (mainly due to the comet scene in Round 3, where Till rejects the chance of freedom) and thus, he resigned himself to gaining the barest hints of Till's attention, even if it was negative, because he knew that he couldn't have anything more. He was content with what he could get and still chose to look after Till in the ways that he believed truly matter to him (freeing him from his bonds whenever he got the chance to).
Considering their background, it's likely that none of them were exposed to the concept of love and are now just relying on their own interpretation. Thus, it was probably hard for them to ever consider letting go of the ones they love because their own emotions were probably one of the few things that they could claim for themselves since they didn't have any anatomy over their own lives. Ivan was constantly reacting after Till's own actions (such as fighting back after Till punched him when they were younger or repeating the cheer up mantra), so when he noticed that Till was no longer singing he decided to take action that would keep Till from dying. He chose to sacrifice himself so that he wouldn't be confronted with Till's death.
Because, in the end, Ivan was always content with not receiving Till's afections as long as he could be around him in some other way. He crazed to have Till gaze upon him, but he could survive on his presence alone. If Till had died before him, Ivan would've lost a major part of himself. The aliens would've taken away the final thing that he had for himself. He would've died either way. Whether physically or spiritually. At least through his sacrifice, he was able to go out without having to witness the final downfall of the one he cares about the most.
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