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susandsnell · 6 months ago

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hey coco! hope ur having a good day! was wondering if u’d like to talk about why u like and what u find compelling with atton/exile? do u have a particular route or headcanon underwhich u prefer them or is it more of an overarching meta appreciation?

Hi, friend!

Thanks so much for the well-wishes. My day's kind of ehh due to continued Issues but the weather's nice and I'm feeling a little calmer. Hope your day is good!

Thank you so much for sending me this and enabling me shamelessly. I've been ride-or-die for Atton/Exile (which is M/F if you played the Jedi Exile as female, which I did and which is 'canon' but let's not talk about the latter lest we kick the hornet's nest) since summer 2011, which is almost 13 years now? Wild. Literally half my life. Anyhow, my reasons/headcanons have changed and evolved just as I've done a lot of growing up since the time I was first obsessed, but I'll do my best to synthesize/organize my thoughts! (Assume all the Restored Content is canon). More under the cut because 'synthesis' is still essay-length for me, God help me.

First off, I tended to play the Jedi Exile as light-sided and Revan as dark sided; I find the narrative of both games to be the most meaningful with these choices. This post basically puts into words why Revan works better as a Dark Sider, but the Exile, to me, as Revan's foil and mirror, works inversely best as a light sider. The game seems to want you to play her light-sided given how Kreia's best stuff/approval lies in that path. KOTOR II is one of the darkest entries to the Star Wars universe by far, but with a light sided exile, it's a story about how moving through life with an unyielding belief in love and justice for others in your heart will ignite that light in the people around you, and repair a broken world/galaxy.

Enter Atton.

KOTOR II is great in that you technically have such a wide range of shipping dynamics/options, and exactly none of them are functional, largely because it's one of the Star Wars media entries with the most harrowingly realistic depictions of war and its psychological impact on the people it touches. Atton Rand happened to be my favourite of all the love interests at the time because of his voice and his snarky meta-jokes (I was a Daria fanatic almost 2 decades too late, what do you want). Nowadays, I love him because his character basically took the Star Wars expanded universe requirement for Han Solo expys and went off the rails with it, making his 'scoundrel' archetype half-his charming and humorous personality, half-a facade to cover severe and quite realistically portrayed war PTSD as well as his actions as Jaq, the torture-happy mercenary. It's "what if the self-serving charming rogue during wartime archetype was brought to its logical conclusion" and I am here for it.

So first you have the parallels and contrasts - both committed atrocities during the Mandalorian wars, but while Atton was loyal to Revan after their fall and never faced justice for his wrongdoings, the (light-sided) Exile turned from Revan and still was scapegoated by the Council. Atton is a character mired in his own bitterness and cynicism, and you have the option to choose to play the Exile as a character driven solely by her morals, even when she'll suffer unconscionably for them, and it is through this unflinching clinging to her morals that she gains the idealism necessary to survive everything she goes through. Atton once sought to rip freewill away from his victims; the Exile unconsciously, slowly saps it through the cipher.

As a young teen, I admittedly was starry-eyed over the 'sheltered good girl manipulated and hurt by so many meets sexy bad boy recovering from his own past and they protect each other as a power couple' archetyping, but it does go a lot deeper than that. Their dialogue options have easy, natural, sexy chemistry that draws you in, but I do think my appreciation goes deeper. This isn't a simple 'fixing the bad boy' because of the narrative device of the Force cipher meaning you quite literally have "I can fix him" and "I can make him worse" as your game mechanics, lol. You get your surface-level fun of their interactions between the proper, well-mannered Jedi and the flirtatious rapscallion, but you also have two people who, for the reasons I outlined above, fundamentally understand each other after harrowing lifetimes spent alone in their pain and trauma.

I'd go so far as to say Atton is the best-placed of anyone to understand the Exile; the Sion ship is compelling and squee-worthy to any Phantom fangirl worth her salt (as I was), but she's everything he couldn't be or fathom, Visas may have felt closer to the pain the Exile did over Malachor V but her worst actions were committed under duress as a captive of Darth Nihilus and not of her own volition (so I argue she's a lot more morally innocent than Atton or the Exile), Mical/The Disciple is the innocence and warmth of the Exile's upbringing untouched by how the Mando wars reforged her and while Brianna/The Handmaiden is excellent as a potential parallel for specifically the Exile's abuse at the hands of the Jedi (Atris in particular), she's still similarly sheltered to Mical. Bao-Dur was with the Exile during the war but the game didn't develop him enough and understands that aspect of her, but they canonically per the dialogue emotionally distanced themselves given the circumstances, and Mira the Bounty Hunter is cool sister-zoned, but I suspect her family being victim to Malachor V would drive a wedge no matter how much forgiveness the game preaches.

Meanwhile, Atton knows and/or loves not pieces of the Exile, but as she is; the battered and betrayed veteran with a lifetime of wrongdoing to atone for that he recognizes in himself, and the naive Jedi she was before that the charming flirt in him likes to tease. And although his backstory is a revelation, and a harrowing one to the Exile, who sees what she might have become had she stayed with Revan, this is what their relationship is; seeing someone in their totality, and loving and honouring the worst with the best. Despite knowing what the Exile's done, Atton values her enough to still care about how she views him that he begs Kreia not to tell her the truth about his past. The two are instantly drawn to each other on Peragus, not just out of necessity but genuine, instinctive protectiveness, attraction, and a deeper sense (be it Force-Assisted or not) of understanding. Atton refers to it in his death scene (if you count that) as love at first sight, and while there was probably initial infatuation, I think there was just such an instant magnetism that grew and grew between them through shared experience. "Don't give up on me now, dammit!" and "You want her, you get through me." come to mind. Atton is the only party member that asks her to train him in the Force, whereas she has to prompt and convince the others into their awakening. He's deeply scarred by his experiences with the Force, not to mention it's actively dangerous to train as a Jedi due to the Exchange, but he's willing to face that for the Exile - he tells her that part of why he wants to train as a Jedi is to be better able to protect and fight for her. One of the first things he does is teach her to play Pazaak in her head to prevent from psychic attacks through the Force/harm through Kreia's force bond - the exact weapon he wielded against others. The tragedy of any Jedi Exile ship is the constant insecurity created by the force-wound/cipher; how much of anyone's choice to follow in their footsteps or love them is their own free will? What power dynamics, unspoken or obvious, arise from it? But Atton's fierce independence and selfishness almost serves as the clearest answer to this. He willingly reawakens himself to the Force to connect with her, to be better able to fight for her. He chose her, a thousand times over, and whatever role the Force Wound plays, he accepts her influence out of admiration for that steadfast-to-a-fault morality I talked about before.

This isn't some corny gender essentialist "she is his redemption" nonsense either, although redemption is a major theme of a light-sided KOTOR 2; by training Atton and others as a Jedi, the Exile is actively doing the work to heal the galaxy she helped to break. By protecting and teaching and bonding with the Exile, Atton is regaining his own humanity through recognizing hers, over and over, the way he failed to recognize those of his victims. They're together in this, in their recovery, in how they've experienced all extremes of morality. Love, in this story, isn't about fixing someone or breaking them, it's about meeting them where they are and walking alongside them, hopefully to someplace better than where you were when you both met. Is it any wonder that he's the one she walks away with in the end? (As if he'd let her walk alone ever again.)

With all this being said, and to address your question, while the route/headcanon preferences I prefer for Atton/Exile create, I think, the richest narrative with what's there, I've definitely got an overarching meta appreciation for them too. I spent my teen years eagerly eating up every possible iteration of them as a couple, and much of what I described above can hold true in a different aspect if people prefer to play them dark-sided, if people hold the tragic dying in your arms ending as canon, and so forth. They're compelling any way you slice them.

#kotor 2 #atton rand #jedi exile #atton x exile #kotor ii #i hope this made sense sdnfsnfsd #god help me i'm back on my bullshit

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renegade-skywalker · 2 months ago

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A snippet from my massive kotor 2 epic, Out of the Abyss, where Atton and Eden share a moment aboard the Ebon Hawk but are interrupted by floating space debris on the approach to Dantooine courtesy of Malak from the first game, haunting the narrative almost as much as Revan is because even in death the man hates to be upstaged

~~~

Atton couldn’t tell which was stranger - the knowing or the not knowing.

He watched Eden as she examined the nav computer from the corner of his eye, tracing the outline of her as if to match her present self to the stolen one still buried in his memory, wrenched from the mental depths of the mark he’d beaten and turned on Revan’s orders. It fit but also didn’t, lining up in places he did not expect and differing in ways that surprised him further still. But it was the coincidence of it all that unnerved him most, the pieces of his past fitting uncomfortably into place the longer he was in the woman’s presence.

“So,” Eden began, her glance skewing sideward as if detecting his gaze. “What’s our ETA?”

“Uh,” Atton sputtered, turning his attention towards the controls in a way he hoped conveyed that it had always been there. “Less than an hour, looks like.”

Dantooine was a place Atton had never ventured, nor had he ever wanted to. People generally didn’t. From what he knew, it was a fringe world on the cusp of the Outer Rim, known mostly for its farming and for its Jedi. Two things Atton had made a career of avoiding at all costs.

“An hour,” Eden turned the phrase over, considering it. “Alright.”

Atton afforded her a genuine glance now, unafraid if she noticed this time, and furrowed his brow. She was tracing the trade routes again, and from what he could spy from the pilot’s chair, she was currently examining the backwater Myto's Arrow with a careful hand. Atton knew that route by heart, mentally reiterating its coordinate path in his mind as he watched Eden do so with her index finger.

“A lot’s changed in the last ten years,” Atton said, taking a stab at what mired Eden’s mind. She’d been standing behind him for the better part of the last hour, entranced by the map as if she’d never seen one before. “Must be strange.”

“Hmm,” Eden hummed in somber affirmation, her posture wilting slightly. She cocked her head the other way, as if the map might betray something else from that angle. Judging by the way she then shook her head, Atton figured it didn’t. “I never thought about it ‘til now, but to see it all laid out in little informational blurbs and data, it’s just-”

Eden sighed.

“I forgot the rest of the galaxy kept moving.”

Atton had no follow-up to this. Instead, he internally cataloged what planets had since joined the Republic and which routes had changed in the last ten years as if it were a new mental exercise to add to his ongoing repertoire of meticulous distractions. Even the last five years alone were eventful in that regard, and with the Peragus depot now having been exploded out of existence…

“So it goes,” Atton sighed himself, pushing away from the pilot’s console and standing up. His lower back popped with a satisfying crack followed in quick succession by his shoulders snapping out of their shared stasis upon stretching.

“I feel like I need to do that to my brain,” Eden commented with an air of jealousy.

Atton laughed breathily before turning back to the white-blue expanse of hyperspace, his face feeling hot.

“Don’t we all?”

He counted the planets again in his mind, surprised with just how much he remembered. Even when his mind was elsewhere, Atton was always paying attention. It came in handy when your main reaction to the going getting tough was running away to the place no one would ever find you. He’d done it to escape his mother, then the Republic, followed by the Sith, and now anyone looking to cash in on the debt Atton hoped was wiped out with the destruction of Peragus, so long as Luxa was good on her word. If he wanted to keep running, it helped to have a running tab of where he might disappear to next.

“It’ll be weird, being back,” Eden said, turning from the computer and instead standing near the co-pilot’s chair. “I haven’t been to Dantooine since before I joined the war, and even then, the place changed so much before my exile.”

Eden stared out the window, no doubt imagining both a remembered version of the planet as well as a predicted version of what they were about to discover. After a beat, she smiled, and her gaze met Atton’s. He shivered just as she said, “You’ll hate it there.”

“Oh?” If Atton’s face was already hot, it was searing now. “Know me so well already, do you?”

He not only repeated Myto's Arrow in his mind, but simulated a version of Eden tracing its trade route alongside it. Examining Eden was easier inside his own head, not to mention there was less of a chance he’d get caught staring again.

Eden shrugged.

“I’d like to think so,” she said with a slight smile. “You seem to have a pretty solid grasp on me.”

Do I?

Atton only furrowed his brow further at her and walked over to the navicomputer himself, unsure of how he felt to be in such close proximity to Eden even if a baser part of him yearned for it. The longer he traveled with her, the more it became an unavoidable certainty. Maybe delaying the inevitable would help him build up a tolerance, like to the juma he so desperately craved.

“What makes you say that?”

He was genuinely curious. Atton had always prided himself on reading people. It was the main reason Malak had selected him for Revan’s Sith task force, and the reason his father harbored any relationship with him as a child if only for his knack at counting cards and scrutinizing his gambling opponents. It was the reason Atton was of any use to anybody, and if he could be that for Eden too, well…

“You have a knack for anticipating what I might do next,” she said, sounding both bashfully awed yet undeniably somber, almost suspicious. “And even when you don’t, you-”

Eden paused as she turned to face him. Her brow knotted as her eyes narrowed, glowing silver in the light of the navicomputer as she tilted her head ever so slightly. Atton had every opportunity to avert his gaze but instead he held his ground, pleasantly surprised when Eden’s eyes met his. He allowed himself to be observed, to be read, even if in the confines of his mind he was still relaying coordinates and trade routes. But it remained only a vibration beneath it all, a soundtrack to the way he was reading Eden’s expression in turn, taking in the sight of the endearingly messy waves of her hair, the curve of her face, the cut of her jaw, and the way her eyes shone through the thick of her lashes over the crest of her freckled cheekbones while she examined him and thought of what to say next.

“I what?” Atton implored, trying not to sound so interested, trying not to imagine what it might be like to trace Eden’s features with his hands instead of his eyes, skin to skin, and how her body might feel against his.

A feeling washed over Atton, like a question and a comfort both, borne outside himself and instead from the orbit he shared with Eden now.

“You always have my back,” Eden finished, uttering the statement as if a question mark should have accentuated its end, her query only half-realized when she spoke it aloud. Atton tried to imagine the woman before him leading armies, slaughtering thousands with the saber she’d described. This version of her now, wide-eyed and vulnerable? No, never. But the version he’d seen at Lopak Slusk’s throat, face covered in blood, heat radiating off her in a way that was both cold and calculated yet raw and rending? Without a doubt.

There are those who wage war, Kreia had said back in the cell, an image of a younger Eden superseding the version that Atton saw now, a version of her that was both imagined and true, seen through the eyes of her brother. And those who follow them.

He thought of Eden back at the military base, alternating between retching at the sight of death and conversely being the perpetrator of it. Two sides of a coin that did not match yet completed the coin nonetheless.

“Why’s that?” Eden asked, her voice whispersoft. Her eyes fluttered, surprised by her question just as Atton was, a storm brewing in his chest at the sight of her. Eden’s gaze flickered across Atton’s features, only stoic because he was now internally playing his favorite Pazaak game from start to finish, his brain humming with satisfied calm in the wake of his habitual dopamine loop. “It’s not like you owe me anything.”

She asked it as if it weren’t deserved. As if she hadn’t saved his life. As if she’d done something wrong.

She had, of course, at Malachor. But Atton wasn’t about to say that.

And perhaps he never would. At least not yet.

“The only reason I’m not rotting in some forgotten force cage is because of you,” he muttered.

He imagined Corr Desyk’s horror-struck face moments before utter obliteration, his entire squadron turned to dust as Malachor’s surface decayed a thousand years’ worth of rot in an instant, and the smile of the Jedi he killed later, blood curdling on her lips as she bestowed Jaq with what she thought was a gift but was instead a curse he’d carried for years after, her words weighing heavier now than ever before - You are a survivor, through and through. Your allegiances tell as much.

“I owe you my life, but don’t worry. I won’t be dramatic about it.” Atton feigned a lilted, charming smile. “Promise.”

He’d always had a knack of latching onto people who would ensure his survival, even if a part of him yearned for death. It was never out of any desire for it, but out of obligation, those he left behind often paying the debt in his stead. His mother. His squadron. Corr Desyk. Even Revan and Malak perished not long after he escaped their elite forces.

Atton wondered if Eden could sense all of this, feel it in the ether between them despite the coordinates and the power couplings and the Pazaak hands running amok in his brain otherwise, not quite drowning his thoughts out but distorting the feed like a faulty radio signal. But all he felt in her presence was instead an undeniable tranquility, almost like being drugged or lulled to sleep, just as he had been by that HK back on Peragus…

Only in Eden’s presence, submission felt… nice.

Atton swallowed. Hard.

But it is your connection to the Force you must thank, for it is the reason you yet live.

“Your decision to stay is saving me more than you know,” Eden offered with a half-laugh, a blush overcoming her features in a way that endeared Atton to her more than he wanted to admit. Atton mirrored her unwittingly, unable to stop himself. It was as if he’d lost control of his body even if his mind remained his own, unlike when Kreia entered it uninvited. It wasn’t entirely different, but it also wasn’t entirely unpleasant either.

Different versions of Eden swam in his vision, both in the real and within the confines of Atton’s mind - memory that both did and did not belong to him mingling until they merged into one. Whatever pieces felt wrong clicked into place now as goosebumps rose along Atton’s arms. She was both the villain of his past as well as his present savior - neither ruling out the other but coexisting seamlessly as if the universe suddenly made sense, as if his accidental birth, his mistake of a life and his every escape from death in the mess of its aftermath were all given sudden purpose.

“I don’t know what it is but you look… different ,” he said, the thought occurring to him as he spoke. This, too, was unbidden, speaking as if possessed. She did look different, but also very much the same. Eden only made more sense to him now, and Atton wasn’t yet sure what that meant for him. “It’s almost as if - ah, nevermind.”

This he had control over. This he could stop in its tracks. Though why Atton had no clue, and no time to question it. His mind was moving faster than he could translate, quicker than any string of coordinates he’d memorized to drown it all out. Eden - not only every facet of her being but every bit of him and where he fit in the kaleidoscope that was her - here and now, but also where their pasts lined up, parallel but never perpendicular, crossing only now, but why? And where would that lead?

“C’mon,” Eden pleaded, playfully punching Atton in the arm, her hand lingering over his elbow before pulling away. “Let me be the judge.”

Atton mulled it over, his eyes roaming Eden’s features again as if there were some detail he’d missed.

“It’s like…” he began, the air between them both solidifying as if in amber but also dissipating as if they were dissolving into nothing but space dust, “It's like you've got this glow, but only when I see you out of the corner of my eye.”

Atton shook his head.

“It’s hard to explain, but it’s, uh,” his mind reeled, sensation and sentiment folding into one, intermingling to the point that he could not tell between the two of them, his mind brimming with numbers otherwise. “It’s good to see.”

Eden bit her lip, blushing further before betraying the smallest yet most self-indulgent smile Atton had seen yet.

“You can thank Chodo Habat for that,” Eden said. “I… I think I feel more in touch with the Force than I’ve maybe ever been.”

Eden shook her head, disbelief coloring her every gesture as her gaze receded to the middle distance and no doubt into memory. But the air between them still felt warm, comforting. Atton wanted to question it, to distrust it. Though much like Eden, he could not recall a time in which he’d felt more at ease.

“You do seem pretty calm,” Atton admitted softly, moving ever so much closer to her, yearning to feel Eden’s skin against his. Eden’s gaze only met his again, her eyes wide, moving none as Atton neared, as if wanting it, too. “A lot calmer than you were on Peragus when I first met you, at least.”

“Really?” Eden asked. She scrunched up her face slightly, her incredulity genuine.

Atton nodded, again feeling like a willing puppet, unable to control his every impulse when this close in Eden’s proximity.

“It’s practically streaming off of you,” Atton admitted with a breathy laugh. And it was true - everything Atton had learned about the Force told him to be cautious, forever wary and always on edge. His mind a vault with no way to worm oneself in. And despite Kreia’s ability to breach his otherwise steadfast defenses, he felt himself melt in Eden’s presence, soothed by her smile and the pacific sensation radiating off her, reassuring and warm like the sun.

“I-” Eden faltered, choking on her own words. She searched inward, unassuming, before resurfacing with the explanation, “I don’t think I’ve felt this good in a long time, actually.”

It felt like a secret, and Atton liked that.

“Well, it shows,” he said. “You’re a nice counterbalance to that old witch back there.”

He hadn’t meant to say it, but he warmed at the sight of Eden smiling in response, overcome with a bashful laugh that lit up her face, but especially her eyes. Her eyes - her painfully familiar eyes.

“Don’t tell Kreia I said this either,” Eden murmured, her smile fading thankfully little, cementing the secret between them as she leaned towards him and half-whispered, “There’s a lesson in this somewhere, but for now I’m just glad I don’t feel like I’m drowning. At least not as much as before.”

Eden shook her head.

“You probably have no idea what I’m talking about,” Eden sighed, “I’m sorry, I-”

“Don’t be sorry,” Atton breathed, the words tumbling out despite being a lie as he reigned in his growing desire to reach out and touch her. But beneath the warmth of his desire was something colder, something that struck a chord of fear within him just as the ship lurched, jolting out of hyperspace ahead of schedule.

Before Atton could read into the feeling, the Ebon Hawk careened into a field of debris, a few pieces precariously striking its hull and sending them sideward. Without thinking, Atton reached out for Eden, steadying her with his hands as he eased them into the corner beside the pilot’s chair, anchoring them there and preventing them from falling by hooking each of the heels of his boots behind the console and around the base of the seat.

Eden had not only fallen into his arms but against Atton entirely, her torso pressed to his as the ship slanted sideways before eventually righting itself. Only Eden did not relieve herself of Atton’s questing grasp right away. Instead, she lingered. And Atton was in no rush to push her away.

“You okay?” he asked.

She was surprisingly soft despite how solid she was, the sinew of her muscle evident even beneath the layers of her clothing and his. But there was an ease to their closeness that surprised Atton more than anything, an equilibrium he did not expect. His eyes met Eden’s and her gaze softened beneath his heavy-lidded stare. Eden eventually nodded.

“Fine,” she breathed. “You?”

Atton held Eden’s gaze a moment longer before blinking and nodding in turn, regrettably tearing his eyes away from her to cast about the cockpit, squinting against the duraglass in search of the ship’s unusual disruption.

“What was that?” he asked.

He was still holding Eden in his arms, but the woman made no motion to leave, her eyes following his out the window.

“No idea, but-” Eden paused, a startled choke erupting from her throat a moment after.

Atton turned to her once more, again unnerved by how comfortable he felt being this close to her, at how natural it felt, and how unquestioningly Eden remained there as she searched for words. Her eyes remained fixed on the duraglass this time, honing in on a hovering object now floating into view of the cockpit.

“Debris,” Eden said, her voice hoarse. “From… Malak. ”

The name sounded alien on her tongue, wrong. As if she’d never once uttered it before. Atton didn’t question it as his mind put the pieces together. Scorched matter slowly circuited the ship as it now hung in the planet’s orbit, no doubt the remaining aftermath of Darth Malak’s attack on Dantooine some years ago. Were it not for the planet now crowding the view, the vision was not that far off from the ruins of Peragus.

“Do you have any landing codes for us?” Atton asked, easing his grip on Eden though moving away from her none, regretting its inevitability whilst simultaneously recoiling from the contact as if he might soil her. Not that her soul was any cleaner than his. “Did your friends share anything useful?”

Eden nodded, eventually shaking her head as she looked down. She paused, as if examining their proximity and deciphering its meaning before backing slowly away. Eden only moved an inch out of Atton’s grasp, the resulting emptiness all the heavier for her closeness despite it.

“They did, yeah,” she said.

Eden shook her head again, all calm dissolving for a moment before the stillness returned to her; another look for the books. Atton mentally clocked her expression again, as if studying her like an animal, yearning to feel her weight against his again while also fearing it, unsure what might transpire should it happen again.

Atton remained at the ready, prepared to catch Eden again if need-be while also awaiting her answer.

You will not find blind obedience a difficult master.

The need didn’t come, but there was satisfaction in the act of it.

You chose it once.

“You ready for the input?” Eden asked as if the last few moments hadn’t happened.

“Ready whenever you are,” Atton nodded as he leaned over the controls, roused with absolute assurance.

You will learn to embrace it again.

#kotor 2 #atton rand #the jedi exile #atton x exile #my writing #when I call my main fic an 'epic' I mean that in scale lmao

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