Myriad Reckonings

Nothing in particular stood out to him. For some reason he felt uncomfortable digging through his things. Especially with Tarkin watching.
"Let me see that other box," he said. Something small and meaningful. Maybe an object would catch his eye

Tarkin nudged it toward him with his foot, running a hand through his hair. The tension in him was building, the refusal of this irrational anxiety combined with the indignation that he was anxious at all. What did he have to be anxious about? Why did he feel this way?

The other box held much the same tangle of random things. Most of it was from his teen years, but there was one thing wrapped in tattered cloth from an old shirt that was unlike the others.

He took it out and carefully unwrapped it. This room had an eerie feeling to it. Cold, dark, slightly damp. And not to mention Tarkin simply radiating tension beside him.

The cloth held a little cluster of human baby teeth alongside another tooth, slightly bigger and clearly from a feline of some sort. Tarkin glanced over Sirejj's shoulder, and he stiffened.

"Oh," he said quietly. "He kept those?" Garoche had said nothing about this to him or Thalassa, he was sure.

An odd thing to be sure, but the fact that it was something neither of his parents knew about felt oddly familiar. "He must have grown up with a pet cat of some kind. Or else this was his first kill? He picked up the foreign tooth from the bunch, not touching the others.

One secret may connect another.

Tarkin's lip curled in mild disgust. "A wild animal. He was about eight at the time. He found it when it was young; the mother had snuck into our gardens for a quiet place to give birth. I found her and took care of her within a day or so, but the offspring was nowhere to be seen. As far as I can tell, he found it before I did and nursed it until it got too big to hide." His fingers drew together, remembering the feel of the blaster trigger. "I took him outside to the patio and told him to shoot it. He wouldn't, no matter how firm I was, so eventually I killed the beast and showed him how to skin and dress it. Bad eating on those creatures, usually, but it wasn't going to be useful otherwise." He gazed down at the tooth. "Seems that he held onto a piece of the cat afterward."

He studied Tarkin hard for a moment. His eyes almost glowing in the dim light. Hearing the story he could picture it as clear as day as he held the tooth in his hand. In the image in his mind he pictured something he's not been able to see before, the face of young Garoche Tarkin.

"This will do." He laid the rest of the contents of the cloth back in the box, keeping the small cat's tooth.

"That?" Tarkin was shaken out of his discomfort by the absurdity of the statement. "That's what you've been looking for?" A frivolous keepsake from years ago couldn't hold nearly as much weight as Sirejj seemed to think.

Then again, he remembered his first kill clear as day. He'd carried hairs from the animal around with him for weeks afterward until he fell in a river and lost them to the rapids. The sentiment stayed with him, even if the physical reminder didn't. But the cat? Garoche had far more formative encounters than that. Like the time the urtog had nearly killed him.

Tarkin's words were almost icy enough to prick through his skin. He understood harshness. He'd grown up in it. But this man was on an entirely different level. Even his people had commonly made pets of bramble lynxes, who made excellent companions and hunters when they'd reached full size.

Sirejj looked at him for a moment then chuckled at his bewilderment. "This may be insignificant to you. But I am not hunting your ghost."

"I find it hard to believe--" He stopped himself. Did he really? He'd said a hundred times the boy was too soft. Thalassa had always encouraged keepsakes. It did make sense.
"But why this?" he asked instead. "After everything?" He couldn't imagine getting that attached to an animal.

Sirejj sighed, almost defeatedly. It would be nearly impossible to get this man to see something he had resisted for so long. So he wouldn't explain it. Let Tarkin wallow in his own doubt.

"One can't always explain the Force." He said with a knowing look. A prepackaged answer, but it would be as effective as trying to explain it all.

Tarkin gave him a weary look. "Please don't patronize me." He had lost count of how many times Vader had given the exact same answer with the exact same tone. "Mightier than thou didn't work for the Jedi, and it won't work for you." He headed for the door. "If we're finished here, I'd like to move on."

"We are." He used the force to place the lids on both boxes. He then turned to go, holding the tooth in his hand. The room felt exactly like a tomb and he was glad to leave it.

Tarkin was out first, smoothing down his hair in an effort to regain control of himself. He resolved never to go in there again. "And how does something like this serve your purposes? It's similar to a hound tracking a scent, yes?"

"In the most primitive of terms." He didn't elaborate. He was thinking about doing some wandering tonight if he could get away from Tarkin for half a second.