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[ezra_of_lothal]

"I'm Ezra Bridger and this is my communicator thing. Leave a message!"

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[ezra_of_lothal]

[Ezra slumps tiredly into a chair with his tea cup in hand.]

You're not stupid, Maul.

[survivalthroughhate]

No, I'm not.

[Maul says and there's a pleased note in his voice. He does get insulted when people here think him little more than a dumb animal. He would never have survived as long as he did if he was just a full-blown idiot.

Then he turns a bit more pensive, trying to put what he means to say clearly.]

But.....I was trained to be an assassin. When other people were learning how to interact with others as children, I was learning to to kill. So many social niceties people take for granted or the instinctive way that they approach things emotionally aren't there for me at all. I'm learning from the ground up here, things I didn't get the chance to understand or learn after the age of five years old. It is difficult and a very slow process.

[ezra_of_lothal]

I know.

And I get it - at least to some extent. The Empire took my parents on my seventh birthday, and I mostly kept to myself for years. My adopted family had to teach me a lot of this stuff. I really got on their nerves sometimes and...honestly, deliberately sometimes, just to see if they'd hurry up and ditch me.

I do have memories of a more...settled childhood now, and that helps.

[survivalthroughhate]

[Maul nods. He doesn't know much about Ezra's past, given the only memory he really possesses from the future regarding Kanan was blinding the man, but he gets that 'feral child' mindset given he just grew from a feral, wary child with no social skills into a dangerous, psychopathic man still with no social skills.

He stays silent, staring down at his tea and doesn't look up to meet Ezra's eyes. There are emotions in him that are not easy for him to define, things that have long remained dormant and only easily come to the forefront.]

I suppose I should thank you for being patient. I know I'm not.....easy to be around.

[The understatement of the century right there.]

And I do push you sometimes just to see what will happen. But you've been trying to help me learn to become better even when the lessons are difficult and I don't want to listen.

[He looks back up.]

That's not something just anyone here can do.

[ezra_of_lothal]

[Ezra chews on his bottom lip, trying to think through how he wants to respond to that, carefully. It's a pretty massive admission from Maul, and he wants to rewards that positively - without inviting Maul to walk all over his boundaries more.]

I won't say it's easy. Sometimes I just...don't have it in me, to be that sort of patient.

But I do - honestly do - believe that it can be...worth it.

So in that sense, you're welcome.

[He offers a small, but warm smile.]

[survivalthroughhate]

[Maul returns the smile, one that breaks up some of the harsh lines his tattoos create on his face.]

At least there has been definable progress since I started.

[A lot of what makes Maul up has been solid as bedrock for a long, long time. Breaking up all that has solidified in his mind will take a long time, perhaps the rest of his life. But it's working, slowly but surely, every time he makes a decision to be better than what Sidious turned him into.]