Six-- 40. the triple goddess, Quinlan Vos
Title: Six
Author: helgaleena hlglne
Theme: 40-- the triple goddess
Claim: Quinlan Vos
Rating: R
Character(s) and/or Pairing(s): POV Tholme, Quin, six women in his life
Summary: There have always been women in Quin's life, thank goodness.
Warning(s): psychobabble
Notes: This took the most thought of any Quinlan Vos I have ever written. My brain hurts now.
When I retired as sector Guardian to be a 'healer' who specialized in espionage, it was in order to do what was best for my padawan. My beloved says that just as she is a more mobile example of her deep-rooted and long-lived species, I am a rather more stable and insoluble example of mine. I am fond of just sitting, when I can afford to. It has not turned me into a pile of tensionless flab, however; it has turned me into a root.
Now the Order is dissolved, and it is most expedient for its remnants to take root. This includes my former padawan, my only 'child', Master Quinlan Vos. The Force has willed that he find balance enough to grow himself a lineage, not of mere Kiffar fugitives, but of Force users in the shadows. He has found balance with the feminine enough to requite its demands for continuance on the material plane, and for that, grounding in origins. As my mortality catches up with me, this is one service I can still provide them. We may never have geographical roots, but in the Force, the connection will be solid. Now and in future, I can see to that.
Quinlan, of clan Vos, had plenty of negative post-natal experiences with a wholly unwholesome grandmother figure and an absent mother figure. Unlike most Padawans, he had vivid memories of their perfidy and abandonment, respectively. A good deal of his inner conflict has come from surmounting these internal obstacles.
A strong female mentor among his new 'family', the Jedi, remedied the first of these lacks. My wonderful Tr'a Saa took care of that. One of her favorite expressions has to do with pruning-- something the Neti comprehend deeply-- "Accept death; serve life." Both the pruned and the pruner must do this. As a metaphor of the purpose of Jedi with respect to the perpetuation of life in the galaxy, it works quite well.
I love to watch her as she shifts from tree form to humanoid form. She can do it much more rapidly than many of her species-mates, and I think her relative youth aids in this. What takes many of them hours, she can do in minutes, her tendrils compacting into digits, her branches into analogues of hair, her lovely eyes emerging from what had seemed to be mere crevices in her bark. And her taste in garment-analogues is always impeccable. She says she gets them from my imagination. I hadn't realized I had any.
Despite her centuries of existence, Master Saa is timelessly beautiful, especially in her humanoid form. How different was the elder who haunted his life from infancy-- wrinkled and distorted, within and without, by her thirst for power, and self-righteous in her appetite, Sheyf Tinte served Kiffar society far less than she dominated it. All manner of evil flourished during her tenure, including the murder of the more intractable of Quin's relations, and nearly of him. The contrast from one to the other is almost comically extreme.
Tragically, he had to kill her, personally. Most of us are not required to confront our evil animas except in dreams. He doesn't speak of how it pleased Dooku, as well as his own personal darkness, to experience that. I don't make him. All of us need a secret kernel of darkness to provide ballast to our light. I think it is reflected in his constant love for Aayla, even when she fell.
Quin reached out even in his youth to his future padawan Aayla, whose love has always elevated him. I worried when he developed an attachment to a fellow human padawan, Shylar, though, for she did not do so. And I was the one who had to bring it up, for my already taciturn student had resolved not to tell me. When I did, his immediate reaction was to reassure.
"Neither one of us intends to violate our oaths, Master. I would never do that to her. Or to you." What could I do but smile and clap a hand upon his shoulder? It is only now, in hindsight, that I wonder that he didn't phrase his declaration in terms of what he might do to himself. Bonding with that repressed and virginal creature could have seriously unbalanced his libido in the long run.
Their connection was too repressed and clandestine to survive for long, thankfully, though he continued to show her respect, even as she enticed him with half her being and pushed him away with the other half. It helped that despite their reproductive compatibility, they were mentally mismatched. I was secretly glad that they both upheld their prior commitments to knighthood.
And I am certain that the Force itself was at work to bring him together with the other young lady, our mutual padawan Aayla Secura. Working with her and helping her to vanquish the tremendous obstacles which she has faced, with her tremendous gifts, has been fulfilling to us both, and to Quinlan in particular.
I was not surprised to find that semi-mythical tales of the 'Blue Warrior Aayla' have grown among the less sophisticated populations where she was assigned to protect them from Separatist exploitation. Her death as a martyr merely enhances her elevation to legend. And I believe it is wholly deserved. Now as our Order is constantly maligned, examples of 'the good Jedi' become ever more precious to the storytellers, such as I have become upon our travels.
Unlike so many Jedi, Quin has vivid memories of his birth mother. They are forever marred by the vivid experience of her abandoning him by dying.
She and his father lay dead upon Kiffex. The yellow paint of mourning was on my tiny student's face, and Tinte pressed into his unshielded hand the Guardian badge she had been wearing. Through our master-student bond I was witness to his shattering. And endless hours I held his young convulsing body, once his screaming finally wore his vocal cords raw. His own mother had been used as a weapon to kill him, by the one he'd been told by Kiffar custom to regard as his new mother. I had to get him away.
In his fundamental experience, feminine nurturing and abandonment had been inextricably entwined-- until Khaleen. Firstly, she has actively saved his life, numerous times. Secondly, she has given him a new family, a source of fulfillment usually not enjoyed by Jedi, in which I am privileged to be included as de facto grandfather. The tremendous happiness this restoration of mother-love has contributed to the equilibrium of his world-view is beyond calculation. She has blessed us all with her stubborn affirmation of life and love. I don't think she fully realizes the great joy I derive, simply from her referring to me as "Gramps". Call me that forever, Khaleen.
These then are the six powerful polarities of feminine energies in my former padawan's life. They form a crystalline structure of sorts, half dark, half light, half positive, half inimical. Pure maiden versus conflicted maiden. Abandoning mother versus steadfast mother. Upright wise woman versus evil crone. He has experience of them all, and has kept them in balance. That is reassuring. He has meditated with me upon this, and we have laid our foundations in the Force upon them. The lineage will stay physically manifest through them.
Tr'a fusses over me, as my physical being fades. I am certain folk take me for her old father. We never expected children, beyond our padawans. Now she has lost hers, and I have only the one. Once I die, she has said she might plant herself on Kasshyykk. I had hoped she would remain with Quin and his offspring, watching over what we bring to the future. For now, I can only give their young minds the stories.
I am not quite ready to die. Younglings are being born to the only family I have left, and I know that however I can manage it, I will continue to watch over them after transition. Even if Tr'a has some other task, I could endeavor that much.
As the Force wills.
quinlanvos100
Author: helgaleena hlglne
Theme: 40-- the triple goddess
Claim: Quinlan Vos
Rating: R
Character(s) and/or Pairing(s): POV Tholme, Quin, six women in his life
Summary: There have always been women in Quin's life, thank goodness.
Warning(s): psychobabble
Notes: This took the most thought of any Quinlan Vos I have ever written. My brain hurts now.
When I retired as sector Guardian to be a 'healer' who specialized in espionage, it was in order to do what was best for my padawan. My beloved says that just as she is a more mobile example of her deep-rooted and long-lived species, I am a rather more stable and insoluble example of mine. I am fond of just sitting, when I can afford to. It has not turned me into a pile of tensionless flab, however; it has turned me into a root.
Now the Order is dissolved, and it is most expedient for its remnants to take root. This includes my former padawan, my only 'child', Master Quinlan Vos. The Force has willed that he find balance enough to grow himself a lineage, not of mere Kiffar fugitives, but of Force users in the shadows. He has found balance with the feminine enough to requite its demands for continuance on the material plane, and for that, grounding in origins. As my mortality catches up with me, this is one service I can still provide them. We may never have geographical roots, but in the Force, the connection will be solid. Now and in future, I can see to that.
Quinlan, of clan Vos, had plenty of negative post-natal experiences with a wholly unwholesome grandmother figure and an absent mother figure. Unlike most Padawans, he had vivid memories of their perfidy and abandonment, respectively. A good deal of his inner conflict has come from surmounting these internal obstacles.
A strong female mentor among his new 'family', the Jedi, remedied the first of these lacks. My wonderful Tr'a Saa took care of that. One of her favorite expressions has to do with pruning-- something the Neti comprehend deeply-- "Accept death; serve life." Both the pruned and the pruner must do this. As a metaphor of the purpose of Jedi with respect to the perpetuation of life in the galaxy, it works quite well.
I love to watch her as she shifts from tree form to humanoid form. She can do it much more rapidly than many of her species-mates, and I think her relative youth aids in this. What takes many of them hours, she can do in minutes, her tendrils compacting into digits, her branches into analogues of hair, her lovely eyes emerging from what had seemed to be mere crevices in her bark. And her taste in garment-analogues is always impeccable. She says she gets them from my imagination. I hadn't realized I had any.
Despite her centuries of existence, Master Saa is timelessly beautiful, especially in her humanoid form. How different was the elder who haunted his life from infancy-- wrinkled and distorted, within and without, by her thirst for power, and self-righteous in her appetite, Sheyf Tinte served Kiffar society far less than she dominated it. All manner of evil flourished during her tenure, including the murder of the more intractable of Quin's relations, and nearly of him. The contrast from one to the other is almost comically extreme.
Tragically, he had to kill her, personally. Most of us are not required to confront our evil animas except in dreams. He doesn't speak of how it pleased Dooku, as well as his own personal darkness, to experience that. I don't make him. All of us need a secret kernel of darkness to provide ballast to our light. I think it is reflected in his constant love for Aayla, even when she fell.
Quin reached out even in his youth to his future padawan Aayla, whose love has always elevated him. I worried when he developed an attachment to a fellow human padawan, Shylar, though, for she did not do so. And I was the one who had to bring it up, for my already taciturn student had resolved not to tell me. When I did, his immediate reaction was to reassure.
"Neither one of us intends to violate our oaths, Master. I would never do that to her. Or to you." What could I do but smile and clap a hand upon his shoulder? It is only now, in hindsight, that I wonder that he didn't phrase his declaration in terms of what he might do to himself. Bonding with that repressed and virginal creature could have seriously unbalanced his libido in the long run.
Their connection was too repressed and clandestine to survive for long, thankfully, though he continued to show her respect, even as she enticed him with half her being and pushed him away with the other half. It helped that despite their reproductive compatibility, they were mentally mismatched. I was secretly glad that they both upheld their prior commitments to knighthood.
And I am certain that the Force itself was at work to bring him together with the other young lady, our mutual padawan Aayla Secura. Working with her and helping her to vanquish the tremendous obstacles which she has faced, with her tremendous gifts, has been fulfilling to us both, and to Quinlan in particular.
I was not surprised to find that semi-mythical tales of the 'Blue Warrior Aayla' have grown among the less sophisticated populations where she was assigned to protect them from Separatist exploitation. Her death as a martyr merely enhances her elevation to legend. And I believe it is wholly deserved. Now as our Order is constantly maligned, examples of 'the good Jedi' become ever more precious to the storytellers, such as I have become upon our travels.
Unlike so many Jedi, Quin has vivid memories of his birth mother. They are forever marred by the vivid experience of her abandoning him by dying.
She and his father lay dead upon Kiffex. The yellow paint of mourning was on my tiny student's face, and Tinte pressed into his unshielded hand the Guardian badge she had been wearing. Through our master-student bond I was witness to his shattering. And endless hours I held his young convulsing body, once his screaming finally wore his vocal cords raw. His own mother had been used as a weapon to kill him, by the one he'd been told by Kiffar custom to regard as his new mother. I had to get him away.
In his fundamental experience, feminine nurturing and abandonment had been inextricably entwined-- until Khaleen. Firstly, she has actively saved his life, numerous times. Secondly, she has given him a new family, a source of fulfillment usually not enjoyed by Jedi, in which I am privileged to be included as de facto grandfather. The tremendous happiness this restoration of mother-love has contributed to the equilibrium of his world-view is beyond calculation. She has blessed us all with her stubborn affirmation of life and love. I don't think she fully realizes the great joy I derive, simply from her referring to me as "Gramps". Call me that forever, Khaleen.
These then are the six powerful polarities of feminine energies in my former padawan's life. They form a crystalline structure of sorts, half dark, half light, half positive, half inimical. Pure maiden versus conflicted maiden. Abandoning mother versus steadfast mother. Upright wise woman versus evil crone. He has experience of them all, and has kept them in balance. That is reassuring. He has meditated with me upon this, and we have laid our foundations in the Force upon them. The lineage will stay physically manifest through them.
Tr'a fusses over me, as my physical being fades. I am certain folk take me for her old father. We never expected children, beyond our padawans. Now she has lost hers, and I have only the one. Once I die, she has said she might plant herself on Kasshyykk. I had hoped she would remain with Quin and his offspring, watching over what we bring to the future. For now, I can only give their young minds the stories.
I am not quite ready to die. Younglings are being born to the only family I have left, and I know that however I can manage it, I will continue to watch over them after transition. Even if Tr'a has some other task, I could endeavor that much.
As the Force wills.
quinlanvos100