Rhyme and Reason

[Wyl Staedtler]

This wasn't where he wanted to be.

In an abstract sense, of course, since the cavalcade of ships which made up the force of The Wheel was exactly the place Wyl Staedtler wanted to exist in and had indeed spent months trying to reach. It was just... well, he'd thought things would be a little different once he did arrive. The young Jedi hadn't anticipated that whole new hurdles would be thrown into the mix, stirring up trouble in his relationships.

Relationship, really. Just the one - but it was a VIP. Marriage was turning out to be a tricky business.

As he scurried along the passages of the Challenger, an unfamiliar reluctance was apparent in the boy's usually-bounding gait; his shoes dragged with a palpable heaviness that was further weighed down by shoulders which slumped miserably, creating a daunting slope of clear sorrow that was echoed in the morosely puzzled expression splashed across his face. Not even the glorious surroundings of a new vessel were enough to coax a bit of life into the boy's sombre eyes.

Armed with a couple of cans of citrus fizzyglug and a smattering of hope that maybe his intended visit would clear some of the murky cobwebs from his head, Wyl made an abrupt turn and tailored his trajectory to an unmarked set of quarters. With an exhale that dropped from his lips like lead, the boy reached up and buzzed the comm unit by the door panel. His eyes didn't lift from the floor grating when it slid open gracefully.

"Hi," Wyl said flatly. He held up a can of fizzyglug in a hand that trembled with the effort. "Can I come in?"

[Morgan Evanar]

The Challenger's quarters weren't all bad. Morgan had requisitioned a larger bed, but outside of that, his were fairly standard. The Jedi had been given their own corner of the ship to use. There was a slight delay in the door sliding open after the buzz.

Morgan practiced his limited telekinesis on the door controls. It was still imprecise and difficult for him. He rolled free from his desk, where he'd been assisting the Alliance breaking Imperial codes in his spare time.

"Hi Wyl!" He said, before he measured the kid's gaze.

"Is everything ok?" Morgan asked.

[Wyl Staedtler]

Wyl shook his head with the condemned spirit of a criminal and stepped - or slunk, more aptly - into Morgan's room.

"No," he sighed, peering about the room with squinting eyes; it was far too bright for such a foreboding and miserable day. Setting the cans of sugary drink that he'd brought in offering onto the edge of Morgan's desk, the boy flopped bonelessly onto his friend's bed in one smooth topple. His legs dangled off the edge like cliff roots and his arms stretched corpselike to either side as his head lolled back, affording him a fantastic view of the monotonous ceiling. With a dramatic groan, Wyl exclaimed, "My life is ruined!"

[Morgan Evanar]

Morgan frowned. He didn't know Wyl's history, but kids were dramatic sometimes. Wyl especially had a flare for the imaginative. Then again, it could be something serious. He palmed a fizzyglug and cracked the tab. He waited a moment for the carbonation to subside, opened it fully, and then took a sip.

"What happened?" Morgan asked, his voice a mixture of concern and curiosity.

[Wyl Staedtler]

What had happened, indeed, Wyl thought sourly as he propped himself up on his elbows and looked at Morgan with an expression somewhere between anxious lament and absolute disgust.

"Girls," the word was drawled in much the same way that a mysophobic talked about air contamination. "That's what happened. They're nothing but trouble, Morgan!"

Wyl drooped suddenly, deflating like an untied balloon. He sighed tremulously and shook his head. "Horrible, amazing trouble."

[Morgan Evanar]

"Well..." Morgan trailed off. He tried to think of an argument to Wyl's statement, which was pretty much in line with most girls he knew on Nar Shadda. He was now very curious, and somewhat less concerned.

"...which girl makes you say that?" Morgan added calmly.

[Wyl Staedtler]

"Tak," the name fell from Wyl's mouth like a prayer and a curse, the combined weight of sorrow and joy contained within it's single syllable. Small hands rose to cover his face as though he could no longer bear to look at the tragedy that was his life.

"She hates me!" Wyl exclaimed. "I mean it, Morgan, she really does. I don't know what to do; we're too young to get a divorce."

[Morgan Evanar]

"Did she say she hates you?" Morgan asked. He didn't crisply remember his own boyhood mind, but sometimes logical leaps happened when inexperienced. Wait. Divorce?

"Wyl, you're too young to get married."

[Wyl Staedtler]

"Of course we're not," Wyl said patiently, in a tone that intimated that was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard. "If we were too young, we couldn't have done it."

He lifted a hand, flapping it in the air to better display the red, genuine decoder ring that resided on his ring finger. As far as wedding bands went, it was stellar.

"She didn't really say it," Wyl replied thoughtfully, tucking his knees to his chest and rocking side to side. "But then, women don't ever really say what they mean, do they?"

[Morgan Evanar]

"Yes, they do. Its dangerous to assume otherwise." Wyl looked at him with a degree of disbelief.

"Wyl, every lasting relationship needs good communication. If you think Tak is mad at you, you need to talk to her about it."

Tak sounded familiar, but Morgan couldn't recall from where right away.

[Wyl Staedtler]

"I've tried that!" Wyl defended himself, flipping off the bed in a fantastically awkward display of acrobatics. The boy's form left a lot to be desired but he landed nimbly in a crouch on his hands and feet and then dropped down to sit glumly at Morgan's feet, chin in his hands.

"When she didn't reply to my last message I sent her another one and then another one and then I thought well, maybe she didn't get 'em so I sent another one and you know what I got back?" Wyl's mouth slanted and he made a chirping noise. "Sandcrickets."

It was too much to bear. The boy shook his head and then looked up at Morgan with a piercingly curious expression, blue eyes bright with intrigue. "Is Rhianna mad at you?"

[Morgan Evanar]

"No, Rhianna's not mad at me." Morgan noticed Wyl had changed the subject. He sipped the still-fizzy drink.

"Wyl, if she's not writing back, it's not communication. She might not be able to get back to you right now. When did you send the message?" Morgan asked, trying to hide a smile. The poor kid was twisted up, but the situation was so ridiculous. Marriage!

[Wyl Staedtler]

The room lapsed into thoughtful silence as Wyl calculated from the mental calendar in his head. He made a show of having to really mull it over, as if the time hadn't crawled by so slowly that every minute was etched into his heart. He wasn't a complete sissy.

"Approximately three and a quarter days," he announced finally, rising to his knees to grab the other can of fizzyglug off the desk where it rested in a pool of it's own condensation. "But that's since the last one, not the first one. Tak always replies right away. Always."

Wyl really wanted to know why the heck Rhianna had gone away if she wasn't mad at Morgan but he couldn't figure out a way to get back to the subject that wouldn't seem like pushing the matter needlessly.

"I think maybe I said something wrong to her but she didn't write back when I wrote to ask her to find out if that was the reason why she didn't write back in the first place," it was so needlessly complicated that he could feel his brain recoiling. Wyl cracked the top of his drink and took a tentative sip, nose twitching as the carbonated fizz tickled the back of his throat. "And so that's why I came here. 'Cause you know way more about girls. And because we can talk about guy stuff, right?"

[Morgan Evanar]

"We can always talk about guy stuff." Morgan agreed. The time decompression of a kid was a startling sometimes.

"Maybe she's in a place where she can't write back. Give it a week. Or write one of her parents and make sure she's ok." He suggested, although he didn't anticipate it would blow over very well, but if Wyl could get some feedback, he'd probably calm down sooner than later.

[Wyl Staedtler]

"That's forever!" Wyl looked at Morgan incredulously. " And she's getting madder by the second! We gotta strike while the iron is hot."

Somewhere along the line, the repairing of his relationship with Teagan had become a joint project. Wyl picked at a scabbing scrape on his elbow thoughtfully.

"Maybe I shouldn't have told her I liked her better as a vornskr," he mused.

[Morgan Evanar]

A Vornskr cub certainly rang some bells. That Tak.

"But you're married." Morgan countered. "If she married you, she really likes you."

"Listen, panicking now will make you look insecure, and women can smell that from a hundred meters away. And cause Tak can be a vornskr, I bet she could smell it from a kilometer away." Wyl looked deeply troubled now.

"So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna wait a week, and then we're going to play it cool and send a relaxed message."

[Wyl Staedtler]

Relaxed. Like the cool dudes down on the flight deck who winked and said things like, "I can check your coolant, sweetheart," to passing technicians. Wyl learned a heck of a lot hanging out down there, contrary to Daria's opinion.

But:

"A week?" the boy's face filled with the sort of horror normally reserved for those about to die a slow, painful death that promised to be obscenely gory. "Morgan! She could find someone else if we give her a week!"

[Morgan Evanar]

Wyl was stuck in a loop. This was not working. Time to try a new approach.

"She's not much of a wife then." Morgan said dismissively. Galaxy to Wyl. Come in Wyl.

[Wyl Staedtler]

Whoa. Whoa. Back the freighter up: that was going just a bit too far.

"What do you mean?" Wyl narrowed his eyes. Morgan was just about the closest thing he'd ever have to a big brother and the kid thought of him as such but that didn't mean he wouldn't hesitate to defend Tak's honor against him, even if that meant old fashioned fisticuffs. Although, given the man's height and weight advantage, his chances were slim-to-none at coming out victorious. It was the principle of the thing, however. "Tak's amazing. She can turn into a dog."

[Morgan Evanar]

"So amazing that she can't wait a week? It's only another 3 days." Morgan pointed out.

"Besides, she'd have to find someone cooler than you, and that's a tall task." It probably wouldn't hurt to do a little ego stroking, either.

[Wyl Staedtler]

"S'not either," Wyl said, his face brightening with quiet pride. He fidgeted on the floor then looked up, face filled with contemplative deliberation.

"What do I say to her?"

[Morgan Evanar]

Morgan smiled.

"Well, for the next three or four days you don't say anything. Then you ask her how her week was, and that you're looking forward to seeing her again soon." Wyl looked a little suspicious.

"You'll sound interested without sounding desperate, and you can find out what happened without asking directly." He explained.

[Wyl Staedtler]

"This is worse than being an intelligence agent," Wyl moaned wearily, beginning to wonder if maybe he and Tak hadn't bitten off more than they could chew. This whole long-distance thing was like trying to dance the Chandrilan Tango in a handstand. "I can't wait until I'm older and everything isn't so complicated."

Morgan's mouth quirked a bit at that, in an expression that Wyl recognized as nonverbal adult-speak for amused disagreement. Because he wasn't yet ready to approach the idea that loads might not get lighter with each passing birthday, the boy changed the subject.

"How come you're not married, Morgan?" Wyl asked, fiddling with the long sleeves of his tunic that kept the cold that always lingered around the edges of the ship at bay. "You're awesome."

[Morgan Evanar]

Morgan paused, and thought hard about what to say.

"It takes more than being awesome to get married. Both people have to be ready to get married, and I haven't been."

[Wyl Staedtler]

"Why?"

It was one of those annoying pursuing questions but Morgan had walked right into it and Wyl genuinely wanted to know.

[Morgan Evanar]

Morgan frowned. It was a good question, and Morgan hadn't thought about it much, mostly because he couldn't do much about the status quo, and partly because he still missed her.

"I guess if Rhianna and I weren't Jedi, I probably would have married her in a few more years. But I think, right now, we had too many other responsibilities to make that commitment to each other. It wouldn't have been fair for either one of us."

[Wyl Staedtler]

"...Oh."

It didn't make much sense to the boy. If responsibilities kept you from those you cared about, then surely that was to be considered equally unjust, wasn't it? They were meant to be keeping one another safe, building a new hope and if that wasn't a solid definition of marriage then perhaps he and Tak had really gotten themselves into a foreign situation.

Wyl frowned. "Is she ever coming back? Rhianna, I mean."

[Morgan Evanar]

Morgan paused. Rhianna said she would come back one day, but neither of them had any idea when that would be. The way the galaxy was, it was quite possible the answer was never, but Rhianna had said she would return to the Jedi one day. Anything was possible.

"It might be a long time, but yes. She said she would."

[Wyl Staedtler]

"And then what?" Wyl pressed stubbornly, for Morgan's own good. "'Cause I saw you guys that one time when you said you were catching up on your reading and let me tell you..."

[Morgan Evanar]

Morgan wasn't embarrassed easily, but his ears went hot in short order.

"We did start out reading." Morgan interrupted, and caught himself. He enveloped his face in an oversized hand. Rhianna managed to push the door release closed with the Force before Wyl got a good look, despite their mixed states of undress.

[Wyl Staedtler]

Triumph bleeding into his face, Wyl nodded. "Uh-huh. That's how it always starts."

With an air of expertise that had little right to possess the boy, he continued.

"If there was too much responsibility to commit, then how come you were 'reading'?" Wyl crooked his fingers in the air, bracketing the word, "That seems like a big step to me. Tak and I didn't 'read' - " again the air quotes, "Until after we were married because it's a huge, huge, Kessel run-sized leap forward."

[Morgan Evanar]

Morgan paused at the air quotes.

"I meant actual reading. Like a datapad." He explained to the boy, who wasn't buying it, even though it had been true. Well, true for all of about 20 minutes.

"You know, after you reach a certain age..." Wyl's eyes weren't rolling yet, but he could feel them starting to move "...for biological reasons, you'll want to do some very intense reading."

[Wyl Staedtler]

Ohhhh. Now they were on solid ground. Wyl shuddered, thinking back to Teagan's near-death experience.

"Oh, I know all about th'biological reasons," Wyl whistled lowly and shook his head. "Boy, does that lead to trouble."

[Morgan Evanar]

Morgan raised an eyebrow. Wyl was intelligent enough to manage a basic biology textbook, but that sounded like an awfully personal answer.

"The biochemical reasons of puberty." Morgan added to clarify.

[Wyl Staedtler]

"Huh?" Wyl frowned. "I thought we were talking about disease prevention. That's the whole point of... reading. So the person you're reading with doesn't die - although you do tend to get sick after but Dama s'Il says you can only catch Hutt Pox once. Have you had it yet, Morgan?"

[Morgan Evanar]

"For about an afternoon, I itched like crazy. I got it when all the other kids in my neighborhood had it."

"I had it for almost a week." Wyl countered with a mix of jealousy and frustration. Morgan drank the rest of the soda pop, and cracked another can open. The liquid gushed around the tab, and Morgan had to slurp up the excess to keep it from spilling over.

"I think you just lost me, but you need to explain what you mean by reading." Morgan airquoted, can in hand.

[Wyl Staedtler]

"You know..." Wyl said meaningfully. Morgan continued to look at him, eyebrows lifted in patient expectation.

The boy sighed softly and turned around so his back was to his friend. Small hands appeared on his shoulders, for all the world appearing to be from some unseen companion who was holding Wyl in passionate embrace, and then he started to wriggle. Obscene smacking noises cut through the gentle background hum of the quarters, interspersed by exaggerated mmm's. The show was two steps shy of being slapped with a rating by the Galactic Advisory Board.

Wyl carried on until he thought his point had been well and truly made clear. He glanced over his shoulder, grinning. "You know. Reading. It's code for kissin'."

[Morgan Evanar]

Oh Force...
Morgan nearly gagged on his soda, partly because it sounded gross, and partly because he had to stifle laughter. Somehow he managed to regain composure before Wyl turned back around.

"So why would you need protection while kissing?" This would be good.

[Wyl Staedtler]

"Because it's hazardous," Wyl looked at Morgan in astonishment, unable to fathom that the man hadn't worked that out for himself. He was older and had a lot more experience, after all.

"It's misleading too," he continued. "We thought that kissing was a requirement for a long life - you know, ''til death do us part' blah blah blah - and so we did. It was Tak's idea but I didn't want her to die so I agreed. And then we got Hutt Pox. What a ripoff."

Wyl shook his head, face soured at the memory. "So the real question, Morgan, is why wouldn't you need protection while kissing?"

[Morgan Evanar]

"I think I may have missed something in the kissing briefing." He said, and tried to eliminate the disbelief from his skull. It didn't work. Morgan was more than baffled. He was stumped deep. Protection? It was like kissing was a Hutt mob racket.

"Germs aside, what would you need protection from?" he finally managed, his brain still reeled at protection for kissing.

[Wyl Staedtler]

"Well, distraction for one thing. Do you know how much concentration it takes to kiss someone? There's so much to calculate. You pick the wrong time and," Wyl snapped his fingers, "an assassin could get you.

"And think about the spit. I mean, if I hocked a loogie into your fizzyglug, would you drink it? Of course not. Nobody would. That's totally disgusting. But nobody seems to have a problem swappin' fluids when they're kissing which is pretty dumb when you think about it. I'm going to invent a deflector shield for the mouth.

"Then there's always biters to worry about," Wyl was on a roll. "Although I guess once I invent the Safe Snogger, that won't be such a big deal."

[Morgan Evanar]

"Once you get older, the problems go away." Morgan said, a touch of wistfulness in his voice crept in.

"And you're supposed to swallow your spit before you kiss. Keeps down the drool."

[Wyl Staedtler]

Well that made a lot of sense. Except that kissing, Wyl had found, went on a lot longer than one might expect and it wasn't exactly easy to swallow in the middle of all that puckering. Perhaps it was like flying in that practice made perfect.

"The General said the same thing," Wyl remarked. He shook his head, clarifying: "About it getting better as you get older, not about spit. We didn't really talk about spit much, because I think he was a bit cross that we'd been reading at all. You know how it goes with fathers."

They shared a knowing glance and with that shared bit of experience, Wyl decided to explore his friend's past a little more. "Did you do a lot of reading before Rhianna, Morgan?"