Work Text:
28 BBY
The Jedi Order made numerous allowances for honoring the traditions of one's birth culture in addition to that adopted culture they all shared; where there was no conflict of ethics, there was no conflict. Little idols sat patiently in personal quarters, awaiting contemplation. Simplified holiday decorations, just enough to serve as acknowledgement, went up and came down on a regular basis. Tasteful ornaments circled fingers, wrists, horns, heads - sometimes even set into piercings in the skin, though no Jedi with any sense wore piercings that were likely to snag on things if one happened to be sent tumbling. Tattooing was a practice widespread in the galaxy: Mirialans, Pantorans, the Kiffar, and countless others too.
Even Plo Koon, who was dignified and formal even by the standards of Jedi, and who never presented himself in public wearing anything less than full sleeves and multiple layers of clothing, had the ritual scarring of the Baran Do etched into much of his thick hide. The symbols crawled across his arms and his shoulders, his chest and his ribs and his back, and even if he felt no particular need to display markings of personal significance for the galaxy to see he did not regret even one.
For the Jedi children, of course, such painful and (without restorative surgery) permanent practices tended to be discouraged. One might successfully petition to begin such modifications at a young age if it were an established tradition and one were very determined to follow it, but for the most part the children were encouraged to limit themselves to things that were simple, harmless, reasonably tasteful, and most of all easily removed or undone.
Someone had introduced eight-year-old Ahsoka Tano to the practice of painting one's nails, and these were the circumstances in which dignified, formal Jedi Master Plo Koon found himself on that day:
She had stood before him very properly, as she'd been taught, with her tiny hands folded at the front of her tunic (red, she'd suddenly decided she liked to wear red now), and her hopeful blue eyes had been very large.
"Please?" she'd said.
Plo was less than two decades shy of his four hundredth year, and in all the decades upon decades of life that he had spent in service he had unflinchingly faced truly terrible crime lords and pirates and blood-hungry marauders, had safeguarded senators who had not the least interest in being herded along quietly, and had fearlessly negotiated the most delicate treaties between stubborn and prideful planetary rulers. He had accepted upon his scarred shoulders the heaviest of responsibilities a Jedi might bear, which was to serve upon the High Council and be held personally responsible for the lives of ten thousand people who in turn were held responsible for the Republic.
Plo was less than two decades shy of his four hundredth year, and, simply put, he was certainly perfectly able to extricate himself from any snare that could possibly be set for him by a tiny child of only eight.
"Little 'Soka," he began, with the greatest solemnity.
She still looked hopeful.
"While I support the desire for self-expression which is a perfectly natural part of growing up, and I have no quarrel with such practices, I also have a scheduled meeting with Senator Yarua this afternoon-"
Still looked hopeful. Her little short nails were bright red, with uneven attempts at orange lines down the middle.
"-which does not leave much time to remove it all properly, and it would not be appropriate conduct for me to present myself wearing uncustomary ornamentation-"
Plo had faced crime lords, senators, and tyrant kings, and he was certainly perfectly able to extricate himself from this situation.
She looked down at the tiles in the Temple floor, and did not look hopeful anymore.
Jedi Master Plo Koon of the High Council, who flinched at nothing, found in that moment that he hesitated between one carefully chosen word and the next.
"-that would be immediately visible to the honorable senator and those in his employ."
Ahsoka looked up again, and was hopeful again, and Plo took one long and solemn breath through the breathing tubes that fit snugly into the nostrils at each side of his head and he closed his small black eyes behind his goggles and he thought well, after all, it is surely no harm done.
And these were the circumstances in which dignified, formal Jedi Master Plo Koon found himself on that day: he sat with his customary flawless posture at a little round table set into a hallway nook near the Temple dorms, and he rested the toughened palms and thick fingers of his worn and scarred hands flat upon the table's surface-
-and the intricately-etched traditional sheaths that he wore over his Kel Dor talons at all times, save when he washed his hands or was obligated to file the points down again, were set aside-
-and Ahsoka Tano, eight years old, sat with a look of intense concentration upon her small face as she painstakingly swiped her best attempt at an even coating of light blue polish along those talons that evolution had intended for use as digging tools and deadly weapons.
Plo was less than two decades shy of his four hundredth year, and he loomed above the little girl and the table in his vaguely fanged mask as some great dark mountain might loom over flowers in a meadow. He breathed as he always breathed, deep and steady and even, and when Bolla Ropal and Luminara Unduli happened to walk past in conversation and Luminara glanced absently in his direction and then immediately glanced again, Plo turned his head just slightly and (behind his dark goggles) looked her directly in the eye.
Luminara was a woman of quiet dignity and so she did not laugh, but whispered something to Bolla Ropal who looked over with his enormous glittering eyes and he nearly did.
Plo loomed.
Ahsoka finished with her blue paint and his left hand and reached for his right again, picking up his large, worn hand with her small fingers as though the tough hide and the scars and claws simply did not register to her as anything important. Because, of course, they didn't. She had always been this way.
She examined her earlier work. "It's still not all the way dry yet, Master Plo. I think you gotta-"
And then she paused, and looked up at him as though she had for a moment forgotten. "Oh. Right. I'll do it."
And then she took the biggest, deepest breath her small body's lungs could take, and blew on the polish, and fanned at it with her hand.
"Thank you," he rumbled.
"You're welcome," she said, with unfailing politeness, and opened another of the bottles she'd borrowed.
The hallway was not crowded at this hour, but people of various shapes and sizes continued to walk past the table set in its nook from time to time, and some of them did not notice, and some of them did.
"Good morning, master, I was just about to start getting ready for this aftern-" and then Bultar looked down from his face and saw the table and she stopped quite suddenly, and walked no further.
"Padawan," Plo said, in greeting.
"Ah," Bultar said, and then stopped again.
Ahsoka paused in her task, which was very carefully painting white lines over the dry(ish) layer of blue, and looked up shyly with her large eyes without lifting her head. Her self-confidence was still a work in progress. "Hi, Bultar. You can be next, if you want to."
Bultar was twenty-two years old. She had been in Plo's care since she was seventeen, which was not as long as most masters of twenty-two-year-old padawans had had with their students, but even so Plo hardly needed to make use of his telepathic gift to read in her presence and her dark eyes the reason for the sudden rush of nostalgia that radiated outwards in the Force: her first master would never have let Plo live this down.
That was true.
He smiled quietly, which always made the lines near his covered eyes bunch up a little, but he did not choose to show mercy. "Padawan?" he prompted, with a level innocence.
Bultar had grown into a serious young woman, whose smiles were both quiet and small, yet even so he thought she softened. "All right, Ahsoka. But I have to go clean up first. I've been in the gym and I'm a little gross."
"Okay," Ahsoka said (and though her voice was quiet her eyes were bright), and she touched the little brush to Plo's talon again.
Plo decided that he might show a little mercy, after all. "Now, little 'Soka, you know that she is my padawan, and therefore she will be going with me to see the senator. And you see that she is human, and does not wear sheaths on her fingers. So it might be best to choose something for her that is...not too brightly colored, don't you think?"
Ahsoka considered this very thoughtfully, and looked back up at Bultar. "I could make them all white?"
"Thank you, I would like that."
Ahsoka beamed, and Bultar left for the showers, and Plo sat with his customary flawless posture and breathed as he always breathed. Deep, and steady, and even.
He was certainly perfectly able to extricate himself from this situation. He had simply chosen not to, as was his right, and it was surely no harm done.
(He really never would have lived this down. And that, he thought, as the lines near his eyes bunched up a little, was something he could have endured too.)