Disappointment was a bitter feeling to swallow. And it gnawed the same way as guilt but without the possibility of resolution; it ate and it settled in the gut and clenched the throat. And it was hard to even understand - but then there were clear moments of comprehension, clear moments where recriminations were flung at herself. She had been bitter, had been petty. For little reason other than pricked vanity and pride. It had been humiliating to be found so lacking, that feeling coupled with the old and awoken feeling of failure.
Regression. Disappointing Ark, the Pureblood who had become a mentor. An ally. An inspiration for climbing to better, new heights; to aspire to grow to.
A petty drunkard wasting away, a sore and blight with no purpose or worthwhile accomplishments. That'd been what she'd been when Ark had found her - someone courting self-destruction who had found no purpose, no passion. Someone with no dreams left, holding broken shards in bloodied hands. Someone with no future, bleakly facing death and no longer fighting for a place in the galaxy. And she'd regressed, reverted back to that drunkard in a moment of concern; harshly judging Ark and his motives against the mistaken view of someone who'd seen him as not only an obstacle but a rallying point for destruction.
Her apology had been heartfelt, an almost bleak apology as the tone Ark had spoken to her in had set in. She remembered the people who had spoken to her in that tone, the way they'd all eventually thrown their hands up when she hadn't grown more wise, more controlled, more reserved. She remembered the first time Ark had spoken to her that way, when he'd rescinded his offer of solace and protection, pulled his hand back because she had been nothing but a disappointment.
And the dangerous edge in his voice, the growl. A warning, the reminder that although he had been kind he had been kind purely on his whim. A suddenly brutal reminder that crossing him would have consequences, the same way her rash and foolish actions trying to stop him from taking Sverdas had resulted in the death of her pet. The knowledge that she had hit a line, offended him, insulted him.
Ark had been kind. Accepting. Understanding. Encouraging. Inspiring. Protective.
He had given her shelter and resources and a place to study and work, as close to a home as she was likely to ever find again. The space to carve out her own place, find her footing. Become what she had the potential to become. And she'd risked it in a stupid and petty moment.
But how to show Ark she'd meant her apology? Actions, he said. Prove it, he demanded. But how? Offering objects wouldn't prove anything; placating gifts would be worthless to Ark because they were things, not actions. Things could be given without learning the lessons required - she knew that from her own past. Gifts were merely motions, meaningless objects that carried nothing in their acquisition other than the implication of time.
Time wasn't enough. Sinking time into something didn't show she'd really moved past the drunkard wasting away on a worthless moon.
Actions.
Her mind wandered, settling with every centering breath. She was in the little tucked ruins she had found when getting lost, legs folded under her as she'd dropped into a meditative seat.
The doubt and self-recrimination were powerful feelings - but they weakened her. They weren't helpful; they were the sort of dark emotions that crippled a person and destroyed the possibility of their use in furthering her connections to the darkside. She had to accept them though and use them to be stronger, use them to strengthen both her resolve and her dedication. Reject the weakness they invited and turn them around. She could - would - do it. She had to be more than she'd been a scant year ago.
How to prove it.
She let out a breath.
How to show she'd moved on.
Actions.
Doubt and recriminations and disappointment she turned to anger, let them fester. Loathing for herself began, for the weaknesses she clung to. She focused on those feelings, nurturing them the same way she'd once called up peace.
These were useful emotions, feelings that would drive her onwards and upwards and help her climb to new heights. These she could turn and spur herself with, could settle her mind in to and relax finally. Now she could call up the 'gift' Ark had given her, the chaotic images she could barely grasp, the gaping wounds and clawing panic and horrible pain and sudden, inescapable death and destruction. She pulled it up much the same way she'd have wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, letting it rise up and enfold her thoughts.
The images pulled up the shattered and grasping memories of her first meeting with Xekseko and Venrirr, the itching and scraping of those horrific eyes. The unintelligible and incomprehensible, destabilizing agony. She still could not make sense of it all - the colors, the shapes, it had been beyond her comprehension. The jokes about colors had been nothing compared to the reality and inability to understand. Paired with the gift from Ark, the swirls of everything he had placed in her mind, she felt a slick sheen of sweat rise.
And yet she continued, feeling it help her find a new avenue of connection and understanding towards the darkside. She turned her mind and thoughts to the pure feelings of it, a sigh of breath as she gave herself over to it.
Wednesday, July 6, 2016
Ciphered Holos
What are they doing now?
It felt like the war was on the brink of something to the woman, the sixth sense of premonition that something moved, slipped in, and was growing. It was that precipice of feeling right before a major change in the landscape, that feeling that precipitated a clash on the battlefield.
She reached over, pulling out her datapad lying on the desk and with a flick starting to scan through the war reports.
She barely set foot on the Promenade now, excepting few occurrences to hang in the Slopes. But it wasn't even some feeling of 'too much to do' that kept her away, nor was it a feeling of 'evade your friends' but simply... it'd changed. Or she'd changed.
It was probably the latter.
Where are they now?
She didn't know. She occasionally kept in touch with Sriia but other than helping the woman they seemed to not exchange words. It was probably the 'opposite side of things' problem. Torlem had never shot a time to talk (and how long ago was that request and promise made?) and it'd been ages since she'd seen the 'old crowd' around. What was even left of it.
Maybe Torlem had gotten his Knighthood. Maybe the war was just too all-encompassing, too devouring, to allow for shenanigans. Or maybe she'd just stopped looking for them, stopped seeking out the thrill and adventure and - finally? - settling down.
She raised a hand, reaching up to stroke the muzzle of the small hound she'd picked up at the market. She wasn't attached to it, not like she'd been with Sparks, wasn't sentimental. Which meant she could pet it, croon to it, and not feel more than a flicker when it started to cry in pain as the blood and Force worked. But she had an idea and it hadn't shaken from her mind so she was sitting in the lab watching the Force move and twist and buckle as it bent to her will.
It was a battle of will though, watching the shifts and catching them as they started to unknit and return to normal - but no she wanted them this way. She tuned out the screams, the panicked cries of pain from the beast before they started to sound... more like screams. But still she didn't mind, fingers running down the barrier as she waited.
When it was done she could feel the Force shifting, the tug of emotions brought out unnaturally and wafting in her mind like an undercurrent of a scent, barely registered but there. Weak but that was the moment, the crux, the same feeling she'd felt when studying Ark's creation.
It bleated. It cried. And it died in the span of a few breaths.
Aran deactivated the cage, reaching inside and pulling out the mutilated corpse her experiment had left.
It'd worked.
Now she just needed to make the carrier live longer. And then... her mind turned over the possibilities. What was her goal? She knew the goal. Small, unobstrusive carrier tugging emotions into patterns. Weariness was a mindset that could be evoked, she figured, worming it into ranks slowly. Tired people were defeated people.
..defeat. Defeat. Weariness could be fought off. But weariness edged a battle to its end, a trudge of mistakes and fumbles leading to the inevitable conclusion of conflict.
Weariness, like sleep, was a natural state and something every species experienced. She could tease it out easily, worm it past defenses. Little plagues of weariness, pockets scurrying about - it was a little insidious way to migrate her experiments with emotions.
Would you enjoy the life...
She could almost hear the Pureblood's voice in her ear while absently brushing strands of hair from her face, the blood on her fingers tacky and copper-scented. Aran found she missed their company, missed the intricate debate and lessoning, the odd camaraderie, the odd and twisted friendship.
She missed the press to continue, too, so imposed it on herself now more than ever. There was no battlefield to test on nearby but she fancied if she needed to she could find another little skirmish zone and see her plans wrought large. Stop and think of what you're doing a little voice whispered and she ignore it, recalling instead the rush, the rightness, the comfort she found.
With a hand she reached down, picking up the corpse.
The pain was a small price to pay.
It felt like the war was on the brink of something to the woman, the sixth sense of premonition that something moved, slipped in, and was growing. It was that precipice of feeling right before a major change in the landscape, that feeling that precipitated a clash on the battlefield.
She reached over, pulling out her datapad lying on the desk and with a flick starting to scan through the war reports.
She barely set foot on the Promenade now, excepting few occurrences to hang in the Slopes. But it wasn't even some feeling of 'too much to do' that kept her away, nor was it a feeling of 'evade your friends' but simply... it'd changed. Or she'd changed.
It was probably the latter.
Where are they now?
She didn't know. She occasionally kept in touch with Sriia but other than helping the woman they seemed to not exchange words. It was probably the 'opposite side of things' problem. Torlem had never shot a time to talk (and how long ago was that request and promise made?) and it'd been ages since she'd seen the 'old crowd' around. What was even left of it.
Maybe Torlem had gotten his Knighthood. Maybe the war was just too all-encompassing, too devouring, to allow for shenanigans. Or maybe she'd just stopped looking for them, stopped seeking out the thrill and adventure and - finally? - settling down.
She raised a hand, reaching up to stroke the muzzle of the small hound she'd picked up at the market. She wasn't attached to it, not like she'd been with Sparks, wasn't sentimental. Which meant she could pet it, croon to it, and not feel more than a flicker when it started to cry in pain as the blood and Force worked. But she had an idea and it hadn't shaken from her mind so she was sitting in the lab watching the Force move and twist and buckle as it bent to her will.
It was a battle of will though, watching the shifts and catching them as they started to unknit and return to normal - but no she wanted them this way. She tuned out the screams, the panicked cries of pain from the beast before they started to sound... more like screams. But still she didn't mind, fingers running down the barrier as she waited.
When it was done she could feel the Force shifting, the tug of emotions brought out unnaturally and wafting in her mind like an undercurrent of a scent, barely registered but there. Weak but that was the moment, the crux, the same feeling she'd felt when studying Ark's creation.
It bleated. It cried. And it died in the span of a few breaths.
Aran deactivated the cage, reaching inside and pulling out the mutilated corpse her experiment had left.
It'd worked.
Now she just needed to make the carrier live longer. And then... her mind turned over the possibilities. What was her goal? She knew the goal. Small, unobstrusive carrier tugging emotions into patterns. Weariness was a mindset that could be evoked, she figured, worming it into ranks slowly. Tired people were defeated people.
..defeat. Defeat. Weariness could be fought off. But weariness edged a battle to its end, a trudge of mistakes and fumbles leading to the inevitable conclusion of conflict.
Weariness, like sleep, was a natural state and something every species experienced. She could tease it out easily, worm it past defenses. Little plagues of weariness, pockets scurrying about - it was a little insidious way to migrate her experiments with emotions.
Would you enjoy the life...
She could almost hear the Pureblood's voice in her ear while absently brushing strands of hair from her face, the blood on her fingers tacky and copper-scented. Aran found she missed their company, missed the intricate debate and lessoning, the odd camaraderie, the odd and twisted friendship.
She missed the press to continue, too, so imposed it on herself now more than ever. There was no battlefield to test on nearby but she fancied if she needed to she could find another little skirmish zone and see her plans wrought large. Stop and think of what you're doing a little voice whispered and she ignore it, recalling instead the rush, the rightness, the comfort she found.
With a hand she reached down, picking up the corpse.
The pain was a small price to pay.
Ciphered Holos
She turned the saber over in her hand, shifting its weight against her fingers and palm before setting the hilt down.
Life had become a blur of activity again, an endless cycle of too little sleep and too many lies and too many gaps and breaks of conscience. The enforced rest and break had turned into a slightly extended one, the woman floundering on what to do after the advice she'd offered her master.
Why had she made that suggestion? It'd bring further condemnation, further distance, but in the end she could see why.
The same reason she had done despicable things to get in with the Barge. The same reason she'd hired Rax-tex, hired the thugs and murderers of the underworld, the same reason she still did. The same echoing statement that she'd agreed with long ago, so long ago, when she and Zachiry had spoken.
The same thing she'd discussed with Akkai.
Someone had to - someone had to get the blood on their hands so the idealists could live in a better world. Someone had to make the choices a better person would never accept, because they were capable of making them. Because someone had to make them. Because sacrifices were worth protecting the people she still cared about. Even when she knew they wouldn't understand. They were people of conscience, people who would do the upright thing when pressed, because they believed so much in it that they would never bow.
They'll think you're truly gone, though, a voice whispered, the Miralukan running a hand through her hair at the thought. They would. She knew they would. If they found out, if they learned what she'd counseled - they wouldnever understand this time.
She suspected not even her master knew why she'd really suggested what she had. Or if he did, he didn't care - did he, maybe, glean the reason? But it'd tempered the rage, tempered the risk, until he had been able to see the reason. Now it was a matter of waiting, watching, continuing her work.
It will cost you everything, and she accepted that. She would do the despicable things no one else would and maybe be able to offer information it'd be otherwise impossible to get.
She picked up the saber, hearing the siren call of it and the way it yearned for battle and blood, and shifted it in her hand again.
The confusion over her friendships had faded, settling uneasily into a pattern of ignoring the fragments. If she ignored them long enough perhaps her friends would ignore the division, stop asking questions, and let her pretend. She had faded again, trying to edge away from study but at the back of her thoughts there was the itch and call and desire and she clipped the saber to her belt, standing up abruptly.
She'd been so long from her work. So long from her research, her studies, her practice. So long from the life of Sith, of her place, that she wondered what and why she'd been allowed to for so long. Perhaps the focus of the House had shifted so much to counter the threat that her subtle shading had gone without comment, as long as she did her work at some point.
She picked up her datapad, tapping out a message on it then closing the screen. Ark had contacted her last night, admitted his infection and taken advantage of the dispensation of the anti-fungal she had set up at her offices. Said the Rose had a possible leak of information.
What had the Aristocra promised her, if he found out she had crossed him?
She'd remember at some point. For now it was time to get back to work.
Life had become a blur of activity again, an endless cycle of too little sleep and too many lies and too many gaps and breaks of conscience. The enforced rest and break had turned into a slightly extended one, the woman floundering on what to do after the advice she'd offered her master.
Why had she made that suggestion? It'd bring further condemnation, further distance, but in the end she could see why.
The same reason she had done despicable things to get in with the Barge. The same reason she'd hired Rax-tex, hired the thugs and murderers of the underworld, the same reason she still did. The same echoing statement that she'd agreed with long ago, so long ago, when she and Zachiry had spoken.
The same thing she'd discussed with Akkai.
Someone had to - someone had to get the blood on their hands so the idealists could live in a better world. Someone had to make the choices a better person would never accept, because they were capable of making them. Because someone had to make them. Because sacrifices were worth protecting the people she still cared about. Even when she knew they wouldn't understand. They were people of conscience, people who would do the upright thing when pressed, because they believed so much in it that they would never bow.
They'll think you're truly gone, though, a voice whispered, the Miralukan running a hand through her hair at the thought. They would. She knew they would. If they found out, if they learned what she'd counseled - they wouldnever understand this time.
She suspected not even her master knew why she'd really suggested what she had. Or if he did, he didn't care - did he, maybe, glean the reason? But it'd tempered the rage, tempered the risk, until he had been able to see the reason. Now it was a matter of waiting, watching, continuing her work.
It will cost you everything, and she accepted that. She would do the despicable things no one else would and maybe be able to offer information it'd be otherwise impossible to get.
She picked up the saber, hearing the siren call of it and the way it yearned for battle and blood, and shifted it in her hand again.
The confusion over her friendships had faded, settling uneasily into a pattern of ignoring the fragments. If she ignored them long enough perhaps her friends would ignore the division, stop asking questions, and let her pretend. She had faded again, trying to edge away from study but at the back of her thoughts there was the itch and call and desire and she clipped the saber to her belt, standing up abruptly.
She'd been so long from her work. So long from her research, her studies, her practice. So long from the life of Sith, of her place, that she wondered what and why she'd been allowed to for so long. Perhaps the focus of the House had shifted so much to counter the threat that her subtle shading had gone without comment, as long as she did her work at some point.
She picked up her datapad, tapping out a message on it then closing the screen. Ark had contacted her last night, admitted his infection and taken advantage of the dispensation of the anti-fungal she had set up at her offices. Said the Rose had a possible leak of information.
What had the Aristocra promised her, if he found out she had crossed him?
She'd remember at some point. For now it was time to get back to work.
Ciphered Holos
"I'll never take that path."
Aran didn't care that Kailest was somewhere nearby, watching. She could even not care that the night would assuredly get back to Krassk's ears right now, stripping off the jacket and folding it, setting it aside in favor of grabbing something - anything - else. And the saber... Her head turned, reaching for the hilt, fingers curling around it.
She felt the hum, the chaos. It'd once been a beacon of peace, calm, rememberance and that was worn away by the sing-song hum that now accompanied it. She turned the hilt over in her hand, digging digits into the facets of the crystal embedded in the hilt, before she turned, stalking back and setting the hilt down. Away.
The night had...gone.
Play the information and contract broker - that role had been easy. As promised she's secured The Hive to the Chiss' agenda for the upcoming Dheroveer problems, as rumors had begun building. As promised she'd reached out and chatted with Rax, Rax had agreed to drag Birdy along, and with Ark. She had a few more messages to send out, but she'd bring the collective of the shady underbelly together for a meeting and let the credits fall where they would. She'd even gone that step further and reached out to the other side of the fence for help, trying to get that crucial throw-in from the others.
She'd discussed getting Penumbra as well, but for that she'd need to get a message to Rexarn, and that was a barrel of trouble to consider doing. She'd still do it, approach them through Rex, but it'd be a song and a dance to find a good way.
There were soft noises in the Bucket, little sounds of life moving and ticking and shuffling. It'd been something she hadn't heard for a long time. It felt alien, strange in a way that set her on guard, watching her tongue again. Softly she muttered to herself, the Force working in unspoken frustration before she put her head in her hands, curling up.
Torlem hurt. She couldn't play him, didn't want to maybe was the better way of stating it. She'd spent too much time being too honest with the padawan to lie to him the way she could do with Sriia. Sriia she could nurse an anger against, but Torlem - he'd done nothing. Nothing but be an honest friend.
Her head turned, listening to see where Kailest was, checking to see how the Force told her the 'pilot' was moving. The talk with the Jedi had been as tense as she'd expected. "They're going to have a harder time trusting you, now."
No kark. She hadn't expected it to be a walk in the Senate gardens but she'd clung to the hope that a greater threat would give everyone a chance to set aside differences to knit up just long enough to take it down. They could fight later, be enemies later.
Illusions were precious things.
"How will you get away with picking and choosing?" Yes, Torlem was right - it was still war. Even a temporary alliance to face a threat like the Dheroveer would end and it'd be war. What was she supposed to say, tell him that she'd go after the people she'd bled for if she were ordered to? She knew she was expected to, but she was having enough problems stepping aside when it was merely a name and Force she knew - if one of her friends was opposing her Master... Aran paced, unable to wrench herself back to the calm again.
Ark had left her with illusions, letting them exist in favor of slowly wearing away and indulging. He'd threatened to remove the illusions but hadn't. He'd made her make choices but had left her with her friendships and views on them intact. Little whispers and sound arguments showing they were going to be transitory but breaking them hadn't been something he had opted to do. They'd break on their own.
So she'd started to let them go. And then she'd been confronted with how much she valued them. They made her pull up, stop, and try, damnably, to be better. To be worthy of them. In the end Ark was right - if she called someone a friend, a superior, the lengths she went to bordered on utterly insane. And now she had given Torlem a promise that'd be hard to keep.
"Why Sith, Book?"
Her head turned, running a hand raggedly through her hair before she pulled it down, pulling long strands back to re-tie the tail. When Torlem asked she didn't fob him off the way she'd fobbed off Akkai and Sriia, telling him 'it'd gotten complicated' because for some unknown reason she didn't want to lie to Torlem. So she'd made a promise instead, to tell him why. Everything, if he wanted, so at least someone would stop offering judgement without the full grounding of facts.
And then Torlem had turned back, returning to his Master, the Jedi, and friends - and she'd turned on her heels and stalked away. And she was left with a cold and almost horrifying realization that she wasn't going to get to keep her precious illusions because they were so obvious a weakness even she could see it. She'd fall into - at best - inaction. At worst? She let out a breath.
She still wasn't strong enough. The tie that'd been Krenthor's saber was shattered, twisted, changed - but she now stood facing a greater one. "...the Force shall free me," she murmured into the silence.
She'd tell Torlem the whole truth. When he wanted her to. In the meantime she picked up her datapad, tapping out a very short and very basic message, hitting 'send' on it before she could change her mind.
"My friendships compromise my resolve and conviction, Master. --Aran"
Aran didn't care that Kailest was somewhere nearby, watching. She could even not care that the night would assuredly get back to Krassk's ears right now, stripping off the jacket and folding it, setting it aside in favor of grabbing something - anything - else. And the saber... Her head turned, reaching for the hilt, fingers curling around it.
She felt the hum, the chaos. It'd once been a beacon of peace, calm, rememberance and that was worn away by the sing-song hum that now accompanied it. She turned the hilt over in her hand, digging digits into the facets of the crystal embedded in the hilt, before she turned, stalking back and setting the hilt down. Away.
The night had...gone.
Play the information and contract broker - that role had been easy. As promised she's secured The Hive to the Chiss' agenda for the upcoming Dheroveer problems, as rumors had begun building. As promised she'd reached out and chatted with Rax, Rax had agreed to drag Birdy along, and with Ark. She had a few more messages to send out, but she'd bring the collective of the shady underbelly together for a meeting and let the credits fall where they would. She'd even gone that step further and reached out to the other side of the fence for help, trying to get that crucial throw-in from the others.
She'd discussed getting Penumbra as well, but for that she'd need to get a message to Rexarn, and that was a barrel of trouble to consider doing. She'd still do it, approach them through Rex, but it'd be a song and a dance to find a good way.
There were soft noises in the Bucket, little sounds of life moving and ticking and shuffling. It'd been something she hadn't heard for a long time. It felt alien, strange in a way that set her on guard, watching her tongue again. Softly she muttered to herself, the Force working in unspoken frustration before she put her head in her hands, curling up.
Torlem hurt. She couldn't play him, didn't want to maybe was the better way of stating it. She'd spent too much time being too honest with the padawan to lie to him the way she could do with Sriia. Sriia she could nurse an anger against, but Torlem - he'd done nothing. Nothing but be an honest friend.
Her head turned, listening to see where Kailest was, checking to see how the Force told her the 'pilot' was moving. The talk with the Jedi had been as tense as she'd expected. "They're going to have a harder time trusting you, now."
No kark. She hadn't expected it to be a walk in the Senate gardens but she'd clung to the hope that a greater threat would give everyone a chance to set aside differences to knit up just long enough to take it down. They could fight later, be enemies later.
Illusions were precious things.
"How will you get away with picking and choosing?" Yes, Torlem was right - it was still war. Even a temporary alliance to face a threat like the Dheroveer would end and it'd be war. What was she supposed to say, tell him that she'd go after the people she'd bled for if she were ordered to? She knew she was expected to, but she was having enough problems stepping aside when it was merely a name and Force she knew - if one of her friends was opposing her Master... Aran paced, unable to wrench herself back to the calm again.
Ark had left her with illusions, letting them exist in favor of slowly wearing away and indulging. He'd threatened to remove the illusions but hadn't. He'd made her make choices but had left her with her friendships and views on them intact. Little whispers and sound arguments showing they were going to be transitory but breaking them hadn't been something he had opted to do. They'd break on their own.
So she'd started to let them go. And then she'd been confronted with how much she valued them. They made her pull up, stop, and try, damnably, to be better. To be worthy of them. In the end Ark was right - if she called someone a friend, a superior, the lengths she went to bordered on utterly insane. And now she had given Torlem a promise that'd be hard to keep.
"Why Sith, Book?"
Her head turned, running a hand raggedly through her hair before she pulled it down, pulling long strands back to re-tie the tail. When Torlem asked she didn't fob him off the way she'd fobbed off Akkai and Sriia, telling him 'it'd gotten complicated' because for some unknown reason she didn't want to lie to Torlem. So she'd made a promise instead, to tell him why. Everything, if he wanted, so at least someone would stop offering judgement without the full grounding of facts.
And then Torlem had turned back, returning to his Master, the Jedi, and friends - and she'd turned on her heels and stalked away. And she was left with a cold and almost horrifying realization that she wasn't going to get to keep her precious illusions because they were so obvious a weakness even she could see it. She'd fall into - at best - inaction. At worst? She let out a breath.
She still wasn't strong enough. The tie that'd been Krenthor's saber was shattered, twisted, changed - but she now stood facing a greater one. "...the Force shall free me," she murmured into the silence.
She'd tell Torlem the whole truth. When he wanted her to. In the meantime she picked up her datapad, tapping out a very short and very basic message, hitting 'send' on it before she could change her mind.
"My friendships compromise my resolve and conviction, Master. --Aran"
Ciphered Holos
Rolling out of the bed Aran gingerly touched her aching jaw. It was better than taking a boot to the face but the swift hit from the training weight had put her out as surely as a knock on the temples would've done. Her jaw hurt, feeling the bone almost assuredly cracked - it had a kolto wrap on it and another few on the little dents she'd taken from the spinning weights, but she knew she was in medical. It smelled like it, crisp and clean and horrifying, every memory and association woken up by the place. Too many days spent in medbay 'for her own safety' came to mind, too many times she'd been bottled up.
Swinging legs over the edge of the bed Aran put her fingers to her jaw, shakily calling on the Force to knit the weakened bone back together. The pounding in her temples lessened as she knitted the damage away, breath caught in the pain healing with the Dark Side meant. It was far, far easier to call upon the Dark Side of the Force than to try to knit herself back up with the distant Light Side. Even though it hurt - the Dark Side hurt to use, pain-riddled but soothing at the same time, a dichotomy she had stopped questioning - she worked, hand pressed against the cool wall of the medical room.
There were droids bustling nearby. She could feel the bruising leave her jaw and she gave her head a shake as if clearing it. Her skin crawled at the droids but she had accepted them. The staff - slaves? - were just as easily accepted now. "Mistress-" one of them began and Aran lifted her hand to silence them, patting her belt before cursing as she headed for the door.
No saber. Or at least, her hand patting her jacket again, not the right one. She still had the cool, small and sleek hilt that had been a gift what, two years ago? But she was missing his hilt. The one she'd just gotten back.
She didn't particularly care if Krassk was alerted that she'd left medical with a grabbed pack of kolto and a blistering oath at the person who'd tried to get her to remain. She didn't head to the training arena though, swearing again as she turned and slammed a fist into the nearby wall. Anger simmered just below the surface of her thoughts, swirling, rolling and crashing. She'd been in the trancelike state of working on forms, smooth as water over a rock, when Krassk had yelled for her. She'd spent more time in combat practice over the past few days than she'd openly logged in years. Ever since Krassk had pressed pure anger into her mind and she'd snapped from it...
She wrenched her thoughts back. Krassk had realized one of her hidden little secrets. Same as Xan had noticed that one time, noting how she'd moved her feet. Clandestine. She'd devoted ten years to the study of niman's form, ten years putting her makashi and juyo roots behind her. And in one moment Krassk had snapped that line of control and one of the small lines she'd clung to had blurred. She inhaled sharply, shaking her hand out and rubbing the heel of her palm, feeling the scrape of skin and raw cut in flesh. She was still easy to manipulate, sway - the constant broil of emotions frayed her control. And her own knotted emotions - the constant practice of forms that pressed her control - and she let out a shaken breath.
She was unbalanced. Her inclination was to pull back, to hunker down and settle herself again, center herself, regain the fragile control. But - there was a fragment of a scowl tinging her lips - she had... asked for this. Logically she knew that. She knew this was what she had approached Krassk for. And she'd already been lectured like a greenie, grilled and tested for her knowledge of the Code - he'd clarified before she could flippantly ask which one he wanted - and although some of her answers had been accepted, the majority had been found... lacking. The back of her neck burned at the recollection.
Two desires warred in the woman and eventually she rubbed the heel of her hand again before turning towards the training arena. She could center herself with a little bit of physical activity at least and maybe she could shake the itch in her shoulders before she turned to another round of hurting her liver.
Swinging legs over the edge of the bed Aran put her fingers to her jaw, shakily calling on the Force to knit the weakened bone back together. The pounding in her temples lessened as she knitted the damage away, breath caught in the pain healing with the Dark Side meant. It was far, far easier to call upon the Dark Side of the Force than to try to knit herself back up with the distant Light Side. Even though it hurt - the Dark Side hurt to use, pain-riddled but soothing at the same time, a dichotomy she had stopped questioning - she worked, hand pressed against the cool wall of the medical room.
There were droids bustling nearby. She could feel the bruising leave her jaw and she gave her head a shake as if clearing it. Her skin crawled at the droids but she had accepted them. The staff - slaves? - were just as easily accepted now. "Mistress-" one of them began and Aran lifted her hand to silence them, patting her belt before cursing as she headed for the door.
No saber. Or at least, her hand patting her jacket again, not the right one. She still had the cool, small and sleek hilt that had been a gift what, two years ago? But she was missing his hilt. The one she'd just gotten back.
She didn't particularly care if Krassk was alerted that she'd left medical with a grabbed pack of kolto and a blistering oath at the person who'd tried to get her to remain. She didn't head to the training arena though, swearing again as she turned and slammed a fist into the nearby wall. Anger simmered just below the surface of her thoughts, swirling, rolling and crashing. She'd been in the trancelike state of working on forms, smooth as water over a rock, when Krassk had yelled for her. She'd spent more time in combat practice over the past few days than she'd openly logged in years. Ever since Krassk had pressed pure anger into her mind and she'd snapped from it...
She wrenched her thoughts back. Krassk had realized one of her hidden little secrets. Same as Xan had noticed that one time, noting how she'd moved her feet. Clandestine. She'd devoted ten years to the study of niman's form, ten years putting her makashi and juyo roots behind her. And in one moment Krassk had snapped that line of control and one of the small lines she'd clung to had blurred. She inhaled sharply, shaking her hand out and rubbing the heel of her palm, feeling the scrape of skin and raw cut in flesh. She was still easy to manipulate, sway - the constant broil of emotions frayed her control. And her own knotted emotions - the constant practice of forms that pressed her control - and she let out a shaken breath.
She was unbalanced. Her inclination was to pull back, to hunker down and settle herself again, center herself, regain the fragile control. But - there was a fragment of a scowl tinging her lips - she had... asked for this. Logically she knew that. She knew this was what she had approached Krassk for. And she'd already been lectured like a greenie, grilled and tested for her knowledge of the Code - he'd clarified before she could flippantly ask which one he wanted - and although some of her answers had been accepted, the majority had been found... lacking. The back of her neck burned at the recollection.
Two desires warred in the woman and eventually she rubbed the heel of her hand again before turning towards the training arena. She could center herself with a little bit of physical activity at least and maybe she could shake the itch in her shoulders before she turned to another round of hurting her liver.
Ciphered Holos
It was frightening how much her friends still meant to her. It had to be a secret too, something hidden and locked away, because it meant her friends were a weakness still and something she hadn't - couldn't - excise from herself. And if that weakness was known then it wouldn't be ignored, would it? It was a sizable one, and she'd almost managed to convince herself that her friends, her old friends, didn't matter. Because they'd hate her. They'd hate what she'd done, what she'd become, what she did in returning to the arms of the Empire.
And then there'd been Akkai.
He'd said he understood, that he'd done the same. And something had broken, some support she'd built up had faltered and fractured, because he'd still cared even though she'd vanished from them for months on end without a word. When he'd put clawed fingers around her throat and whispered into her ear, his threat-that-was-a-promise, it'd been hard to not tell him what she'd done because he would eventually find out and when he did the uneasy, broken thing would be gone again. But until that moment she'd treasure what she'd regained. She'd treasure the soft offer to get away, the escape she could take when everything became too much again, when she needed to think, to gather her head. It wouldn't last, it'd eventually go away like her few friendships would as the war dragged on, but until it was gone it was something she'd claw to keep.
She couldn't exactly go camping in the desert. Well she reasoned she could but it wouldn't be the same. She supposed she could head into the jungles of Kaas but even then it wouldn't be the same - the constant rain would depress she felt and the seclusion on that planet wouldn't be the comfort she recalled from her other trips.
The almost comforting dark presence of the Force felt alien now, felt like it grated against her skin as the same time as it lapped at it like sun-warmed water against skin. She'd been absent from the Estate for nearly two weeks while she'd begun rebuilding the company up, networking and wheeling and dealing again, letting her mind fall away from her Force related work. It ate her dreams though, when she slept, ate them and nagged them, dogged her footsteps while she'd tried to be a fish out of water. Maybe that was why she felt torn.
Lost.
She was still lost, and the offer, the hint of help - that hand again, outstretched like a lifeline in a raging storm - and she was beaten down again. She'd taken the hand when offered and she knew what it meant wasn't something to dismiss easily. It wasn't something she could afford to dismiss, not really - her precarious position in the Empire was at stake.
Her precarious position in the House was at stake too. She shivered, hand turning the shower on and letting the water run, warming over her outstretched fingers. She could still feel the pulse, the pounding beat of music from the dark cantina from a few days ago humming in her blood, the release and games it'd been. She'd had to go back after it, because hiding in the underworld had still brought her face-first with someone who could report on her absence. Better to go back on her own, show up.
Her fingers slid over the tiled wall dragging water droplets with her digits, streaking the surface like claws rending, nails catching in the grooves. She could immerse herself in her work again, let the work eat away her inhibitions and destroy the last fragments of her old self, or she could cling to her friends and to their precious hopes. She knew what she should do, as a Sith - the voice whispered in her thoughts. She could lie to them, use them, confuse them, hide her work, have both worlds again. For just a moment, for a few weeks or months, she could have it back.
Not everything though. She doubted Shukla would forgive the lie, the protecting of Raxino'vel versus a shaky friendship - she could explain it but it'd require the woman to give her a chance and she doubted that chance would ever come up. She felt a slice at the fact Sriia had warned Jean about associating with her. Sriia who'd maybe started this all, been the folcrum for everything crashing down, the tip that had changed it all.
If it hadn't been for her she'd never had run into Xekseko. Never run in to Venrrir. Never come to Arkatorn's attention perhaps, never met Hadzuka. All the maybes ran in her mind as the water washed around, the Miralukan knowing it was useless to look at the past and the what-if's. But there was a boil of anger now, worming into her thoughts like a poisonous trickle.
If she hadn't cared so much for her friends...
And then there'd been Akkai.
He'd said he understood, that he'd done the same. And something had broken, some support she'd built up had faltered and fractured, because he'd still cared even though she'd vanished from them for months on end without a word. When he'd put clawed fingers around her throat and whispered into her ear, his threat-that-was-a-promise, it'd been hard to not tell him what she'd done because he would eventually find out and when he did the uneasy, broken thing would be gone again. But until that moment she'd treasure what she'd regained. She'd treasure the soft offer to get away, the escape she could take when everything became too much again, when she needed to think, to gather her head. It wouldn't last, it'd eventually go away like her few friendships would as the war dragged on, but until it was gone it was something she'd claw to keep.
She couldn't exactly go camping in the desert. Well she reasoned she could but it wouldn't be the same. She supposed she could head into the jungles of Kaas but even then it wouldn't be the same - the constant rain would depress she felt and the seclusion on that planet wouldn't be the comfort she recalled from her other trips.
The almost comforting dark presence of the Force felt alien now, felt like it grated against her skin as the same time as it lapped at it like sun-warmed water against skin. She'd been absent from the Estate for nearly two weeks while she'd begun rebuilding the company up, networking and wheeling and dealing again, letting her mind fall away from her Force related work. It ate her dreams though, when she slept, ate them and nagged them, dogged her footsteps while she'd tried to be a fish out of water. Maybe that was why she felt torn.
Lost.
She was still lost, and the offer, the hint of help - that hand again, outstretched like a lifeline in a raging storm - and she was beaten down again. She'd taken the hand when offered and she knew what it meant wasn't something to dismiss easily. It wasn't something she could afford to dismiss, not really - her precarious position in the Empire was at stake.
Her precarious position in the House was at stake too. She shivered, hand turning the shower on and letting the water run, warming over her outstretched fingers. She could still feel the pulse, the pounding beat of music from the dark cantina from a few days ago humming in her blood, the release and games it'd been. She'd had to go back after it, because hiding in the underworld had still brought her face-first with someone who could report on her absence. Better to go back on her own, show up.
Her fingers slid over the tiled wall dragging water droplets with her digits, streaking the surface like claws rending, nails catching in the grooves. She could immerse herself in her work again, let the work eat away her inhibitions and destroy the last fragments of her old self, or she could cling to her friends and to their precious hopes. She knew what she should do, as a Sith - the voice whispered in her thoughts. She could lie to them, use them, confuse them, hide her work, have both worlds again. For just a moment, for a few weeks or months, she could have it back.
Not everything though. She doubted Shukla would forgive the lie, the protecting of Raxino'vel versus a shaky friendship - she could explain it but it'd require the woman to give her a chance and she doubted that chance would ever come up. She felt a slice at the fact Sriia had warned Jean about associating with her. Sriia who'd maybe started this all, been the folcrum for everything crashing down, the tip that had changed it all.
If it hadn't been for her she'd never had run into Xekseko. Never run in to Venrrir. Never come to Arkatorn's attention perhaps, never met Hadzuka. All the maybes ran in her mind as the water washed around, the Miralukan knowing it was useless to look at the past and the what-if's. But there was a boil of anger now, worming into her thoughts like a poisonous trickle.
If she hadn't cared so much for her friends...
Ciphered Holos
The singer's voice was a soft croon, the Miralukan absently flicking her fingers, the volume raising in the workroom. The song was sad and melancholy, mournful, and the woman moved through the lab with a sway of hips, almost dancing to the beat. The skirt was split and she wore a pair of lose pants underneath, twisting her heel and rolling her neck, fingers fanning out as her arms spread in the arm, graceful. She discounted the possibility of surveillance and simply lived in the moment as she worked, humming along with the song.
She'd done a variety of projects while at the Estate but had returned to her medical work, rekindled with a new passion from her talks with Lord A'sinder. Their work dovetailed well and it made her want to stretch out to new heights, new horizons, and new symptoms.
Aran had always been a student of sorcery as much as alchemy, and her years of medical training - Force and mundane - meant she knew the ways to twist and tweak just enough. Knitting Runna's mind together had brought a whole new possibility to her work - was it possible to induce that fragmenting? Quickly, easily, with the Force?
Segmenting emotions by manipulating the limbic system was one thing, exacerbating one emotion so that it overwrought the target but was it possible to make someone entirely consumed by an emotion without her virus as the medium? Was it possible to quickly induce that fragmented personality Runna evidenced?
And if the answer was yes, what could she do with it? She frowned as the song ended, another twisting of fingers shutting the music down so that she could hum on her own, soft but pitch perfect. She was already weaving knitted commands into Runna's fragmented mind in order to put her to sleep - could she put commands in to trigger one emotional response?
She wanted a trained mind to try it on now. Her work on her second virus now seemed to have halted but she muttered in frustration before turning back to it. She couldn't stop working on it now that she had a new avenue to look forward to - she needed to continue to show results.
Otherwise she'd risk losing patronage, power, and she'd be right back where she started. You just traded one set of chains- but that thought she stopped. No, she was free through her own actions. Her determination would claw her back the rank she needed to act and operate freely.
Setting onto her stool she hooked her feet on the bar running around the circumference of the legs and tapped her fingers against the desk. A dragging of fingers into the air brought up the molecular structure of the latest virus she had been working on, turning it with a twist of her hand. Something was missing every time she ran it through the creation phase. Something that left it breaking down into an inert form too easily. It barely had time to spread before the host was useless. It burned through its victim - well, projected victim, she was keeping this one in simulator until it was operating correctly - and ran them out but was too... well, the listed effects were reputedly gruesome.
She poked and prodded the proteins, the twisted strands until she started to work in another modification based on her first work and then it clicked. "Yes..." she breathed, leaning forward as she worked. Link that there and allow that to bleed over... durable, spreading, but still with her required need to burn out if it moved too far from the battlefield.
Now the challenge was to make it a small enough particle to get through filtration systems. She dragged the stool closer, leaning over the terminal while she worked.
She'd done a variety of projects while at the Estate but had returned to her medical work, rekindled with a new passion from her talks with Lord A'sinder. Their work dovetailed well and it made her want to stretch out to new heights, new horizons, and new symptoms.
Aran had always been a student of sorcery as much as alchemy, and her years of medical training - Force and mundane - meant she knew the ways to twist and tweak just enough. Knitting Runna's mind together had brought a whole new possibility to her work - was it possible to induce that fragmenting? Quickly, easily, with the Force?
Segmenting emotions by manipulating the limbic system was one thing, exacerbating one emotion so that it overwrought the target but was it possible to make someone entirely consumed by an emotion without her virus as the medium? Was it possible to quickly induce that fragmented personality Runna evidenced?
And if the answer was yes, what could she do with it? She frowned as the song ended, another twisting of fingers shutting the music down so that she could hum on her own, soft but pitch perfect. She was already weaving knitted commands into Runna's fragmented mind in order to put her to sleep - could she put commands in to trigger one emotional response?
She wanted a trained mind to try it on now. Her work on her second virus now seemed to have halted but she muttered in frustration before turning back to it. She couldn't stop working on it now that she had a new avenue to look forward to - she needed to continue to show results.
Otherwise she'd risk losing patronage, power, and she'd be right back where she started. You just traded one set of chains- but that thought she stopped. No, she was free through her own actions. Her determination would claw her back the rank she needed to act and operate freely.
Setting onto her stool she hooked her feet on the bar running around the circumference of the legs and tapped her fingers against the desk. A dragging of fingers into the air brought up the molecular structure of the latest virus she had been working on, turning it with a twist of her hand. Something was missing every time she ran it through the creation phase. Something that left it breaking down into an inert form too easily. It barely had time to spread before the host was useless. It burned through its victim - well, projected victim, she was keeping this one in simulator until it was operating correctly - and ran them out but was too... well, the listed effects were reputedly gruesome.
She poked and prodded the proteins, the twisted strands until she started to work in another modification based on her first work and then it clicked. "Yes..." she breathed, leaning forward as she worked. Link that there and allow that to bleed over... durable, spreading, but still with her required need to burn out if it moved too far from the battlefield.
Now the challenge was to make it a small enough particle to get through filtration systems. She dragged the stool closer, leaning over the terminal while she worked.
Ciphered Holos
Now she had two projects. The imbuement would be relatively easy, though the weight trick would have to be worked on. She might even be able to modify it further so that it became stronger as the combat wore on, drawing in from the pain and emotions of battle to fuel it. That wasn't requested but it'd make the armor applicable to the House if she did that.
Then there was her plague. Really, she leaned back in her chair, inhaling the soft scent of greenery, she could think of it as three projects. One to convince Vukal that she was perfectly fine acting as a relatively free agent, a proper sword for a Pureblood. She'd noted the absence of a Sith blade in the estate, the peculiar call for and thirst for battle that they had. Their abilities as a focus made them exceptionally useful, and their steeped history made them desirable. Hard to craft properly, but she'd had good teachers and excellent resources.
Then her plague, her new one. She'd decided the first was perfected in its current state but the second she wanted to spread easier, tied to manipulations of the Force itself. Controlled infection vectors. She still was determined to keep her plagues limited to the battlefield, keep them contained. She would not want to unleash a perpetual plague, one that evaded her control and left the battlefield.
She studied the slave she'd called up, her requisition for resources more quickly approved after her success with her first disease.
But first.... the project to convince Krassk she was perfectly fine acting as a relatively free agent. She'd listened as he described the battle to take the estate, comparing him with the other Purebloods she knew, and come to the conclusion he was, well, almost a traditionalist. It simply surprised her that he hadn't found himself a proper blade sooner.
Of course thinking back to that visit also reminded her of the banter exchanged with Drakkan, and the truce they'd settled on. In an effort to not end up on Drakkan's bad side she'd keep her peace and promise - and she would stay out of the man's way, him and his clan, as much as possible. It'd be the best way to ensure nothing was, as he'd put it, taken personally. She did sigh though, knowing that much of the conversation was likely listened to and wondering just what the Darth was going to make of it. Wouldn't that be fun to find out?
It all fell back to illusions, she decided as she ordered the slave to kneel, and keeping them. She had begun to start thinking of herself as Sith and in doing so she realized how many illusions about herself she held, how many opposing actions she embodied. Dagger moved quickly in her hand, the slave jerking then falling to the side, blood spilling to fill the inscribed channels on the floor and beginning to softly pulse as the Force rose to her call. She had been a healer.
She knelt down and with a gesture of her hand and the slave's corpse lifted, moved delicately from the glyphs drawn on the floor and settled into a forming pile. The last slave needed knelt now, a flicker of fear in their eyes as they saw their fate but not struggling, not begging, not pleasing - this one must welcome death as much as they feared it; she put a hand to the side of their face, steadying them, feeling the tremble in their limbs, before she gutted this one letting blood and body spill out with delicate strokes of her knife.
She still could be a healer in service to the Empire but it wouldn't give her the expression of her passions. Now that she was embracing them she was letting them slowly erode her few remaining principles, accepting the changes as gracefully as she could. And Krassk - damn the Pureblood. She held her hands above the glowing blood, liquid forming and slowly shifting, hardening around into a wickedly shaped blade. Violence and hatred, a thirst for blood - it cried out as she wove and forced the creation to harden. It started to sing and she continued to weave the Force around the blood-coloured blade, adding in runes and glyphs in the old tongue - adding poison and havoc, emotions and pain into the very essence of the etched sword.
It was hours, many hours later, when she reached a hand out to grasp the blade. It felt heavy in her hand, but everything did after such a long creation. The blade glinted, green and red, green at the edges with a tang of poison she could feel in the Force, red for the blood runes which glowed dully and pulsed, Force drawn up into the blade and gathering it sluggishly.
The blade fell to the ground as she sat down slowly, feeling exhaustion settle into her body as heavily as a drug. She knew the blade as well as any creator knew their creation, hand brushing down the blade's flat surface to awaken the glyphs. She wondered how well Krassk would know what she'd made.
She wondered how well it'd sing for him in battle, drawn to the combat. She wondered if it would be enough or if it'd be considered just the start.
Then there was her plague. Really, she leaned back in her chair, inhaling the soft scent of greenery, she could think of it as three projects. One to convince Vukal that she was perfectly fine acting as a relatively free agent, a proper sword for a Pureblood. She'd noted the absence of a Sith blade in the estate, the peculiar call for and thirst for battle that they had. Their abilities as a focus made them exceptionally useful, and their steeped history made them desirable. Hard to craft properly, but she'd had good teachers and excellent resources.
Then her plague, her new one. She'd decided the first was perfected in its current state but the second she wanted to spread easier, tied to manipulations of the Force itself. Controlled infection vectors. She still was determined to keep her plagues limited to the battlefield, keep them contained. She would not want to unleash a perpetual plague, one that evaded her control and left the battlefield.
She studied the slave she'd called up, her requisition for resources more quickly approved after her success with her first disease.
But first.... the project to convince Krassk she was perfectly fine acting as a relatively free agent. She'd listened as he described the battle to take the estate, comparing him with the other Purebloods she knew, and come to the conclusion he was, well, almost a traditionalist. It simply surprised her that he hadn't found himself a proper blade sooner.
Of course thinking back to that visit also reminded her of the banter exchanged with Drakkan, and the truce they'd settled on. In an effort to not end up on Drakkan's bad side she'd keep her peace and promise - and she would stay out of the man's way, him and his clan, as much as possible. It'd be the best way to ensure nothing was, as he'd put it, taken personally. She did sigh though, knowing that much of the conversation was likely listened to and wondering just what the Darth was going to make of it. Wouldn't that be fun to find out?
It all fell back to illusions, she decided as she ordered the slave to kneel, and keeping them. She had begun to start thinking of herself as Sith and in doing so she realized how many illusions about herself she held, how many opposing actions she embodied. Dagger moved quickly in her hand, the slave jerking then falling to the side, blood spilling to fill the inscribed channels on the floor and beginning to softly pulse as the Force rose to her call. She had been a healer.
She knelt down and with a gesture of her hand and the slave's corpse lifted, moved delicately from the glyphs drawn on the floor and settled into a forming pile. The last slave needed knelt now, a flicker of fear in their eyes as they saw their fate but not struggling, not begging, not pleasing - this one must welcome death as much as they feared it; she put a hand to the side of their face, steadying them, feeling the tremble in their limbs, before she gutted this one letting blood and body spill out with delicate strokes of her knife.
She still could be a healer in service to the Empire but it wouldn't give her the expression of her passions. Now that she was embracing them she was letting them slowly erode her few remaining principles, accepting the changes as gracefully as she could. And Krassk - damn the Pureblood. She held her hands above the glowing blood, liquid forming and slowly shifting, hardening around into a wickedly shaped blade. Violence and hatred, a thirst for blood - it cried out as she wove and forced the creation to harden. It started to sing and she continued to weave the Force around the blood-coloured blade, adding in runes and glyphs in the old tongue - adding poison and havoc, emotions and pain into the very essence of the etched sword.
It was hours, many hours later, when she reached a hand out to grasp the blade. It felt heavy in her hand, but everything did after such a long creation. The blade glinted, green and red, green at the edges with a tang of poison she could feel in the Force, red for the blood runes which glowed dully and pulsed, Force drawn up into the blade and gathering it sluggishly.
The blade fell to the ground as she sat down slowly, feeling exhaustion settle into her body as heavily as a drug. She knew the blade as well as any creator knew their creation, hand brushing down the blade's flat surface to awaken the glyphs. She wondered how well Krassk would know what she'd made.
She wondered how well it'd sing for him in battle, drawn to the combat. She wondered if it would be enough or if it'd be considered just the start.
Ciphered Holos
A soft rustle of grass beneath her feet, the helmed Sith noting people pulling out of her way as she moved, and a few steps and Aran was near the front lines. Well, the forward command at least, where she had finally volunteered to go.
She had expected to be called in by the Sphere of Defense to give up what information she had long ago, but her allies had likely protected her. The least she could do was pay that back with a little effort. She wondered if she should've told Venny or Xek she was going out to an actual battlefield, or perhaps Ark... but no, this was a decision she had made on her own.
"My lord," the commander said, addressing her by rote title for a sith and nothing else. He didn't bow and the lack of formalities would normally have risked being met with a haughty attitude - but Aran knew the fine line she traded. It was hard to go from being a master to someone with no power but what she could take.
"The Republic forces are pressing their attack here-" he indicated markers on a map, Aran stepping up to 'look' at it, "-here and here. We have enough forces for two defenses but can't handle the third. It was indicated in my orders," and here the man spat the word out, distastefully, as if he resented being ordered to accept a single Alchemist's help, "that you would assist us."
Aran nodded, folding her arms and waiting.
"Well then-" the man's patience was wearing thin, angrily pointing at the map. "Tell me what little you can do! A single Sith, they said, it's rubbish the expectations-" And then, curiously he cut himself off.
Under her helm Aran smiled - and the expression was cruel. With a finger she delicately picked up two tokens, placing them at the ousides of the battlelines. "You will take those two positions. I will handle the center."
The commander looked up, his disbelief apparent. "How?"
"I have my ways," was all she said, striding off towards the lines. "Pull your men back, commander, if you don't want them harmed~" she called back over her shoulder, for once not caring if the call to save lives was heeded or not.
---
First it was the screaming. Her start was slow but Aran worked methodically now, with a firm plan in mind. Lightning arced from her fingers and the pain was negligible compared to the results she reaped; first she broke the mind of one man, ripping his thoughts from his skull until blood ran from his ears. Then she played with her marionettes, waiting until the lines focused on her.
She had once been a healer. She threw herself into the moment, suspending everything but the exultation of the battle to feed and draw from, and slowly the air thickened. Now she turned her healing knowledge to battle, proving one of the whispered rumors true - a healer was a deadly foe.
It was subtle at first. Some men coughed, their aim shaken. The haze rose out and spread like curls of smoke rippling from her form, rising around the men and blanketing the immediate area with a thick dark fog. She stepped forward and like a spark it roared in the air, a living thing now, clawing through the men to spread further and further into their ranks, further and further down the lines. The Imperial soldiers began to pull back, edging far away from the drifting contagion and leaving the woman alone, facing the onslaught of the Republic army.
One Sith.
The closest men began to tremble and she took another step forward. The catalyst for this plague was, well, her. Her Force, her presence, her actions - so she raised her hands, fingers lightly splayed as if in friendly greeting, and the Force wove around her before everything grew quiet.
The fog crept and blanketed the men and they breathed it in, unaware. One breath, two... she smiled. On the third deep breath some men began to tremble, and she stood, transfixed by what she saw. Emotional shifts were beginning, faster than they had in her slaves - she wondered if the battle had already heightened them to the point where it was just that little push they needed.
The first man broke and screamed in incoherent rage and with a flick of her fingers she directed him to the people behind him. Slowly more and more men and women began to scream, rage building into a wave crashing over the forces - and they turned on their fellows, as the plague spread through the ranks, and began to fight, berserk in their emotions, past reason or caring. They were fountains of power - and she fed on them, spreading her plague far across the lines until it stretched beyond her ability to control it. But the beauty was it would burn her victims out.
No rakghoul problems.
It took minutes for the men to tear themselves and each other apart, minutes in which the woman simply stood. The Republic ranks were being torn apart by their own forces, and the screams and wails of terror broke through. And with a nudge Aran turned the fear into a weapon itself, spreading that even further - fear and rage spread as far as her Force could reach and the army broke. It turned into a mindless howling mess of screaming flesh, dying bodies, and incoherent emotions.
Later she noticed the blaster burns from a few lucky shots, later she noticed that she had healed them, later she knelt down in the massive piles of corpses sprawled before and around her, fallen dominoes arranged in a spreading wake around her feet. The plague died without anyone further to feed on as Aran called back in the Force.
The lines routed, the Republic falling away from their dead and leaving them, discharged piles of horror. And when she returned to the camp, still exalting on the feelings she had seen, the commander offered her a bow.
She didn't care though and with a flick of her hand an arc of lightning left her fingertips, forcing the man to both scream from pain and straighten up before she released him. "I'll be heading back now," she said softly, walking back to the waiting shuttle where two guards stood in attention.
She had expected to be called in by the Sphere of Defense to give up what information she had long ago, but her allies had likely protected her. The least she could do was pay that back with a little effort. She wondered if she should've told Venny or Xek she was going out to an actual battlefield, or perhaps Ark... but no, this was a decision she had made on her own.
"My lord," the commander said, addressing her by rote title for a sith and nothing else. He didn't bow and the lack of formalities would normally have risked being met with a haughty attitude - but Aran knew the fine line she traded. It was hard to go from being a master to someone with no power but what she could take.
"The Republic forces are pressing their attack here-" he indicated markers on a map, Aran stepping up to 'look' at it, "-here and here. We have enough forces for two defenses but can't handle the third. It was indicated in my orders," and here the man spat the word out, distastefully, as if he resented being ordered to accept a single Alchemist's help, "that you would assist us."
Aran nodded, folding her arms and waiting.
"Well then-" the man's patience was wearing thin, angrily pointing at the map. "Tell me what little you can do! A single Sith, they said, it's rubbish the expectations-" And then, curiously he cut himself off.
Under her helm Aran smiled - and the expression was cruel. With a finger she delicately picked up two tokens, placing them at the ousides of the battlelines. "You will take those two positions. I will handle the center."
The commander looked up, his disbelief apparent. "How?"
"I have my ways," was all she said, striding off towards the lines. "Pull your men back, commander, if you don't want them harmed~" she called back over her shoulder, for once not caring if the call to save lives was heeded or not.
---
First it was the screaming. Her start was slow but Aran worked methodically now, with a firm plan in mind. Lightning arced from her fingers and the pain was negligible compared to the results she reaped; first she broke the mind of one man, ripping his thoughts from his skull until blood ran from his ears. Then she played with her marionettes, waiting until the lines focused on her.
She had once been a healer. She threw herself into the moment, suspending everything but the exultation of the battle to feed and draw from, and slowly the air thickened. Now she turned her healing knowledge to battle, proving one of the whispered rumors true - a healer was a deadly foe.
It was subtle at first. Some men coughed, their aim shaken. The haze rose out and spread like curls of smoke rippling from her form, rising around the men and blanketing the immediate area with a thick dark fog. She stepped forward and like a spark it roared in the air, a living thing now, clawing through the men to spread further and further into their ranks, further and further down the lines. The Imperial soldiers began to pull back, edging far away from the drifting contagion and leaving the woman alone, facing the onslaught of the Republic army.
One Sith.
The closest men began to tremble and she took another step forward. The catalyst for this plague was, well, her. Her Force, her presence, her actions - so she raised her hands, fingers lightly splayed as if in friendly greeting, and the Force wove around her before everything grew quiet.
The fog crept and blanketed the men and they breathed it in, unaware. One breath, two... she smiled. On the third deep breath some men began to tremble, and she stood, transfixed by what she saw. Emotional shifts were beginning, faster than they had in her slaves - she wondered if the battle had already heightened them to the point where it was just that little push they needed.
The first man broke and screamed in incoherent rage and with a flick of her fingers she directed him to the people behind him. Slowly more and more men and women began to scream, rage building into a wave crashing over the forces - and they turned on their fellows, as the plague spread through the ranks, and began to fight, berserk in their emotions, past reason or caring. They were fountains of power - and she fed on them, spreading her plague far across the lines until it stretched beyond her ability to control it. But the beauty was it would burn her victims out.
No rakghoul problems.
It took minutes for the men to tear themselves and each other apart, minutes in which the woman simply stood. The Republic ranks were being torn apart by their own forces, and the screams and wails of terror broke through. And with a nudge Aran turned the fear into a weapon itself, spreading that even further - fear and rage spread as far as her Force could reach and the army broke. It turned into a mindless howling mess of screaming flesh, dying bodies, and incoherent emotions.
Later she noticed the blaster burns from a few lucky shots, later she noticed that she had healed them, later she knelt down in the massive piles of corpses sprawled before and around her, fallen dominoes arranged in a spreading wake around her feet. The plague died without anyone further to feed on as Aran called back in the Force.
The lines routed, the Republic falling away from their dead and leaving them, discharged piles of horror. And when she returned to the camp, still exalting on the feelings she had seen, the commander offered her a bow.
She didn't care though and with a flick of her hand an arc of lightning left her fingertips, forcing the man to both scream from pain and straighten up before she released him. "I'll be heading back now," she said softly, walking back to the waiting shuttle where two guards stood in attention.
Ciphered Holos
Pulling off her helm Aran set it aside, shaking her hair out with one hand drying the strands with a shake into the air. Helm free from her hands, she unclipped the neck apparatus from its filtering unit, lifting it up and over her head to set it beside the helm.
It was almost armor, of a sort at least, and protection a year ago she would've balked at wearing. Except now she was on Kaas working as a Sith Alchemist and spending her time in the banks of the medical facilities of the capitol, sifting through medical files and more often disease samples to create her own strands.
Why? She paused in the absent-minded motion of running fingers through her longer hair as if contemplating her self-imposed question.
She felt the itch to test her creations in more than just a lab environment. She had unleashed her first creation, her first force-crafted plague, and watched it turn three slaves into berserkers who ripped each other apart. They had been gouging each other to pieces with their fingers, yelling and screaming, and instead of being torn by the pain she had inflicted she recalled grinning, a pleased look about her face, and she wanted to unleash it somewhere with purpose then. She felt the heady draw of their dying emotions, their pain, their screams of agony and pure rage, and had tasted them like a fine wine.
When the slaves were nothing but corpses and the contagion had been removed from the air Aran had turned her attention to one more task. Three vials. She'd made three vials of an antidote and sent them off by blind courier to her recipients. Why had she made those then? If the reason she had made her plague was 'because she could' and 'because it was interesting to do' then why had she crafted an anti-serum?
The same reason. After she had made her plague, it was a further challenge to make something to prevent it. But why had she made so little?
Her head turned as if looking down the hall of the rooms she was leaving. Her allies... had no need of it. Her allies were formidable, skilled, and talented. Her allies needed no protection from her creations because she wouldn't unleash them against them - they had become her good friends, not just allies. Confidants. The few things keeping her alive in the world she existed in now.
She pulled off her gloves, pressing a hand against the wall. Her allies had no need of an antidote because they would be standing with her, watching the results of her plague spread through their enemies. And the people she had sent it to... it was futile to hope they would understand what she did. Why she did it. What drove her.
It was an illusion, a hope, a secret wish she kept buried deep, displaying to no one - she wondered if that last hope would wear away with time or was it wearing away now? She had begun her second plague and realized that at no point would she send the vaccine to the people she'd mailed one to before. She would work on this new one, this banked secret, in the hopes that if she ran into people she had an unstoppable, unbreakable method of attack.
This time she would perfect the method of transport she had begun to grasp before. The first plague - it required inhalation to spread. But she now was attempting to directly manipulate the normal immune system inside a victim until it became infected. A plague begun in a way no one could defend against, at least no one who was not force sensitive. She'd need to start small - slaves - then work her way to the failed acolytes again.
And get new ones as well. Her last batch had died under her careful ministrations.
So many things whirled in her thoughts that she stopped herself, realizing now was the time for a break. Undoing the front of her robes so the skin could air, she went off in search of her current dancer, wanting to unwind. She would think better when relaxed, and nothing relaxed her quite as much as the feel of skin against skin, the beat of drums, the lute and lyre, all woven together into a dance of touch and taste.
It was almost armor, of a sort at least, and protection a year ago she would've balked at wearing. Except now she was on Kaas working as a Sith Alchemist and spending her time in the banks of the medical facilities of the capitol, sifting through medical files and more often disease samples to create her own strands.
Why? She paused in the absent-minded motion of running fingers through her longer hair as if contemplating her self-imposed question.
She felt the itch to test her creations in more than just a lab environment. She had unleashed her first creation, her first force-crafted plague, and watched it turn three slaves into berserkers who ripped each other apart. They had been gouging each other to pieces with their fingers, yelling and screaming, and instead of being torn by the pain she had inflicted she recalled grinning, a pleased look about her face, and she wanted to unleash it somewhere with purpose then. She felt the heady draw of their dying emotions, their pain, their screams of agony and pure rage, and had tasted them like a fine wine.
When the slaves were nothing but corpses and the contagion had been removed from the air Aran had turned her attention to one more task. Three vials. She'd made three vials of an antidote and sent them off by blind courier to her recipients. Why had she made those then? If the reason she had made her plague was 'because she could' and 'because it was interesting to do' then why had she crafted an anti-serum?
The same reason. After she had made her plague, it was a further challenge to make something to prevent it. But why had she made so little?
Her head turned as if looking down the hall of the rooms she was leaving. Her allies... had no need of it. Her allies were formidable, skilled, and talented. Her allies needed no protection from her creations because she wouldn't unleash them against them - they had become her good friends, not just allies. Confidants. The few things keeping her alive in the world she existed in now.
She pulled off her gloves, pressing a hand against the wall. Her allies had no need of an antidote because they would be standing with her, watching the results of her plague spread through their enemies. And the people she had sent it to... it was futile to hope they would understand what she did. Why she did it. What drove her.
It was an illusion, a hope, a secret wish she kept buried deep, displaying to no one - she wondered if that last hope would wear away with time or was it wearing away now? She had begun her second plague and realized that at no point would she send the vaccine to the people she'd mailed one to before. She would work on this new one, this banked secret, in the hopes that if she ran into people she had an unstoppable, unbreakable method of attack.
This time she would perfect the method of transport she had begun to grasp before. The first plague - it required inhalation to spread. But she now was attempting to directly manipulate the normal immune system inside a victim until it became infected. A plague begun in a way no one could defend against, at least no one who was not force sensitive. She'd need to start small - slaves - then work her way to the failed acolytes again.
And get new ones as well. Her last batch had died under her careful ministrations.
So many things whirled in her thoughts that she stopped herself, realizing now was the time for a break. Undoing the front of her robes so the skin could air, she went off in search of her current dancer, wanting to unwind. She would think better when relaxed, and nothing relaxed her quite as much as the feel of skin against skin, the beat of drums, the lute and lyre, all woven together into a dance of touch and taste.
Ciphered Holos
"If I didn't know any better I'd think a Sith were standing in front of me."
Hurtful. But true?
Aran had left the moon shortly after the confrontation - meeting? - with Eron and Torlem. Arriving there had been a mistake in the first place, not shrouding her presence had been a mistake she was ill-equipped to rectify, and answering Torlem's fragmented Miralukese had been... perhaps the greatest mistake. The woman shook her head. Arriving any place was turning out to be a mistake though - either she lied to people she had once trusted or she frightened them or disappointed them. It was safer, more comfortable, in her studies. Pursuing whatever naggled her attention was more worthwhile. Ignoring the guilt she felt she should experience and was constantly surprised by the absence of.
She still ran the company of course. It still sent the slice of profits to Venrrir (her ally, openly admitted) per completed jobs. She now funneled half the profits into her own pocket though, keeping enough for base R 'n D for Sanguine and hiring (of course) but she was debating spinning that off to an attache. Someone who would give the company their full attention while she found hers wandering more and more to what she now considered her great works. Or at least her small
She could spend more time devoted to her studies, her curiosities. Her whims. She was discovering a capricious nature again instead of the slowly-adopted calm and once-steady nature she'd displayed as a Jedi even if that nature had quickly faded and been replaced with impulsiveness. Even now she was reserved for her current company, but she was certain that soon some long-denied pleasures would become commonplace again and they'd feel like well-deserved rewards instead of guilty pleasures.
Sinful memories came to mind as she ran a hand slowly through her hair, dragging and tugging on the strands. She licked her cracked lips and tasting the salt on them before she sighed, hand placed against the wall for balance."Would you enjoy the lifestyle, if you allowed yourself to?" It repeated in her thoughts as she felt like she was slipping ever so steadily back into the lifestyle.
But oh, the slide. The slide had been a slope, slippery and steep - but it'd been so easy, sinfully easy. It'd felt good, comfortable, and now that feeling was ingrained in her use of the Dark Side. Did that mean she was a Sith? She had begun playing the games again - she'd had no choice but to play them again, because she couldn't rely on her 'patrons' for protection.
Soon she'd need to find herself a way to remain free, before she found herself shackled to some lord's power base as an asset.
"You deserve to be more than a tool."
If she'd had eyes they'd be narrowed, teeth baring. She refused to be someone else's pawn. She refused to bow her head now, not when she'd finally begun to live for herself and her own desires.
She turned on her feet, footsteps clicking against the bare floor as she headed back to her studies room. She'd perfected her plague. Now to just practice - and to make sure it wouldn't turn against its creator.
And then somehow meet Torlem again, and try to convince him... of what?
She didn't know if she could play a game on the padawan.
Hurtful. But true?
Aran had left the moon shortly after the confrontation - meeting? - with Eron and Torlem. Arriving there had been a mistake in the first place, not shrouding her presence had been a mistake she was ill-equipped to rectify, and answering Torlem's fragmented Miralukese had been... perhaps the greatest mistake. The woman shook her head. Arriving any place was turning out to be a mistake though - either she lied to people she had once trusted or she frightened them or disappointed them. It was safer, more comfortable, in her studies. Pursuing whatever naggled her attention was more worthwhile. Ignoring the guilt she felt she should experience and was constantly surprised by the absence of.
She still ran the company of course. It still sent the slice of profits to Venrrir (her ally, openly admitted) per completed jobs. She now funneled half the profits into her own pocket though, keeping enough for base R 'n D for Sanguine and hiring (of course) but she was debating spinning that off to an attache. Someone who would give the company their full attention while she found hers wandering more and more to what she now considered her great works. Or at least her small
She could spend more time devoted to her studies, her curiosities. Her whims. She was discovering a capricious nature again instead of the slowly-adopted calm and once-steady nature she'd displayed as a Jedi even if that nature had quickly faded and been replaced with impulsiveness. Even now she was reserved for her current company, but she was certain that soon some long-denied pleasures would become commonplace again and they'd feel like well-deserved rewards instead of guilty pleasures.
Sinful memories came to mind as she ran a hand slowly through her hair, dragging and tugging on the strands. She licked her cracked lips and tasting the salt on them before she sighed, hand placed against the wall for balance."Would you enjoy the lifestyle, if you allowed yourself to?" It repeated in her thoughts as she felt like she was slipping ever so steadily back into the lifestyle.
But oh, the slide. The slide had been a slope, slippery and steep - but it'd been so easy, sinfully easy. It'd felt good, comfortable, and now that feeling was ingrained in her use of the Dark Side. Did that mean she was a Sith? She had begun playing the games again - she'd had no choice but to play them again, because she couldn't rely on her 'patrons' for protection.
Soon she'd need to find herself a way to remain free, before she found herself shackled to some lord's power base as an asset.
"You deserve to be more than a tool."
If she'd had eyes they'd be narrowed, teeth baring. She refused to be someone else's pawn. She refused to bow her head now, not when she'd finally begun to live for herself and her own desires.
She turned on her feet, footsteps clicking against the bare floor as she headed back to her studies room. She'd perfected her plague. Now to just practice - and to make sure it wouldn't turn against its creator.
And then somehow meet Torlem again, and try to convince him... of what?
She didn't know if she could play a game on the padawan.
Ciphered Holos
Aran lifted her head, tiredly rubbing her forehead and shaking her hand out afterwards. She'd done as Ark had recommended and pulled the known viruses from Imperial databases, looking for something to modify. But as she'd suspected nothing had come to mind as readily correct. She wanted something virulent, something that would burn out before leaving the battlefield to avoid a rakghoul debacle, and something that turned her victims into - for lack of a better term - raving monsters ready to tear their own side apart.
She'd studied the force creation Ark had let her see enough to understand how to manipulate the emotions on a baser level - she had none of Ark's fine control over the concept yet, none of his refined practice that he'd demonstrated for her more than once - but she had the start of understanding. Ark wouldn't sit down and explain it, after all.
That wasn't the way of a Sith.
And oh the habits... the Sphere she'd eventually tested in to was headless, which was probably why her application was allowed in the first place - Acharon would never have allowed her to apply for permits and examinations. But with Acharon conveniently dead she supposed that technically all fell under the direct control of the Dark Council and at the moment its rising star was Darth Marr.
He seemed to be fairly moderate for a Sith, from the little she'd observed and noted in her stay in the Empire. Mostly she had resumed older habits - keeping to herself, throwing herself into work and showing it as a passion that marked a growing acceptance of what she was doing, if not the labels associated with it. And yet...
And yet she'd taken one virus and made a cure. Why? Ah, you know why Aran she chided, recalling the pain that meeting had brought about, the slicing death - true death - of a once-lasting friendship. The action was one she could feed on, grow stronger from, use as a source of power for it was a deep and lasting hurt.
How strange that everything was reversed now. Here she resided on Kaas, tucked in a small flat that showed an outlook into the city; here she occasionally took calls from her once-captor and discussed future research with him. Here she felt comfortable like a warm sunbeam against the skin, slipping back into the faded life and aspirations which had driven her before. Here she listened meditatively to the rains against the panes of glass and felt more at-home in her skin than she had in months? Years most likely.
She wore clothing that was most likely 'Sithy' in its appearance because what else did you find at Kaas shopping centers when you needed robes? She tugged a glove on tighter, giving the leather a squeeze before pulling it abruptly off, pressing her hand against the glass and feeling the steady beat, the steady patters of water against it. Sometimes, like when she visited old friends and companions, she wore jackets and coats like a smuggler.
Like when she'd visited Rax. Her attempt to lie to Sriia might've fallen through but she'd still wrangled that promise of time. To speak to Rax'inovel. And when she'd spoken to him, carefully recalling the details and descriptions given to her, calling him on his lies (smooth though they were), she'd offered him information.
Because for all that she treasured her times with Shukla, for all that she wanted to help Sriia, part of her now valued them less. Part of her saw their ties to the Republic as inevitable conflicts and no matter how much she wanted to remain their ally that was, literally, impossible now.
She had returned to the arms of the Empire. They were of the Republic, she was of the Empire. She'd chosen allies strong enough to protect her from the misdeeds and issues of her past, allies able to offer her protections that the Republic had begun to strip away. Freedoms she knew the Republic would rescind, she now had. Of course there was pain in it, heartache of a peculiar sort. Part of her wondered if it would go away with time, another part of her held on to it fiercely, a last dying fragment of who she'd pretended to be.
She'd studied the force creation Ark had let her see enough to understand how to manipulate the emotions on a baser level - she had none of Ark's fine control over the concept yet, none of his refined practice that he'd demonstrated for her more than once - but she had the start of understanding. Ark wouldn't sit down and explain it, after all.
That wasn't the way of a Sith.
And oh the habits... the Sphere she'd eventually tested in to was headless, which was probably why her application was allowed in the first place - Acharon would never have allowed her to apply for permits and examinations. But with Acharon conveniently dead she supposed that technically all fell under the direct control of the Dark Council and at the moment its rising star was Darth Marr.
He seemed to be fairly moderate for a Sith, from the little she'd observed and noted in her stay in the Empire. Mostly she had resumed older habits - keeping to herself, throwing herself into work and showing it as a passion that marked a growing acceptance of what she was doing, if not the labels associated with it. And yet...
And yet she'd taken one virus and made a cure. Why? Ah, you know why Aran she chided, recalling the pain that meeting had brought about, the slicing death - true death - of a once-lasting friendship. The action was one she could feed on, grow stronger from, use as a source of power for it was a deep and lasting hurt.
How strange that everything was reversed now. Here she resided on Kaas, tucked in a small flat that showed an outlook into the city; here she occasionally took calls from her once-captor and discussed future research with him. Here she felt comfortable like a warm sunbeam against the skin, slipping back into the faded life and aspirations which had driven her before. Here she listened meditatively to the rains against the panes of glass and felt more at-home in her skin than she had in months? Years most likely.
She wore clothing that was most likely 'Sithy' in its appearance because what else did you find at Kaas shopping centers when you needed robes? She tugged a glove on tighter, giving the leather a squeeze before pulling it abruptly off, pressing her hand against the glass and feeling the steady beat, the steady patters of water against it. Sometimes, like when she visited old friends and companions, she wore jackets and coats like a smuggler.
Like when she'd visited Rax. Her attempt to lie to Sriia might've fallen through but she'd still wrangled that promise of time. To speak to Rax'inovel. And when she'd spoken to him, carefully recalling the details and descriptions given to her, calling him on his lies (smooth though they were), she'd offered him information.
Because for all that she treasured her times with Shukla, for all that she wanted to help Sriia, part of her now valued them less. Part of her saw their ties to the Republic as inevitable conflicts and no matter how much she wanted to remain their ally that was, literally, impossible now.
She had returned to the arms of the Empire. They were of the Republic, she was of the Empire. She'd chosen allies strong enough to protect her from the misdeeds and issues of her past, allies able to offer her protections that the Republic had begun to strip away. Freedoms she knew the Republic would rescind, she now had. Of course there was pain in it, heartache of a peculiar sort. Part of her wondered if it would go away with time, another part of her held on to it fiercely, a last dying fragment of who she'd pretended to be.
Ciphered Holos
Short hair was easy to run a hand through, the Miralukan feeling something still missing every time she hit the end of her hair, still expecting to have the long trademarked locs that made her so easy to find. She was largely left alone, study materials helpfully provided and left for her, the servants of the ship at her relative beck and call for practise, giving Aran nothing but time and solitude. She had always been able to occupy herself with work, with troubles she and her friends got into, but with nothing she found her attention shifting back more and more to the left-out resources.
What would they think of you now? she taunted herself, catching herself before she sighed. Emotions ebbed and steadied as she set the material aside, hands curling into balled-up fists and arms wrapped around her torso.
She gave her promise that she would stop trying to leave. Isn’t this what friendship is? Friendship was... more than pain, but what amount was she just being used? What part of her alliances and friendships were limited to how useful she was to them versus how dangerous she was? Was she valued for her worth, or was she valued for being information and a resource?
Did they care? And what did they care about - was it the lie she told them or would they care about who she was, who she’d become? Would they still care if they knew about Doc’s blackmailers and what she’d done to them? Would they see it as justified or would they see it as too far.
Was it too far? For a Jedi - yes. But she wasn’t a Jedi - she was... something else. She wasn’t willing to call herself sith but it would be so easy, wouldn’t it? And what was she, if not acting like and studying as if she were a sith in truth - was telling herself she wasn’t a sith just a lie?
Had she really done it, given up on the last of her promises? The big final ones that she’d made years ago, saying she’d never go back, never again become a Sith, were important. They’d been given to Krenthor, to the first Jedi she’d met and respected; he’d been so thrilled at the promise she’d made, offering her a hand in friendship. Her expression fell with confusion seeping into her frame, showing on her face, in her shoulders, in the lines and motions of her hands. Fingers curled and clenched, mind racing.
Aran knew she was past the ‘what are you doing’ stage. She was well past the stage where she could hand-wave, say it was just a phase, and go back to her life. She could still go back to her life, the business, but then her hands curled again. No, she couldn’t, not really. She’d found the joy in experimentation, in pushing the limitations and expanding an idea again, the pure pleasure when it succeeded. She’d always want to play now, with the taste of it on her lips - she could see herself running Sanguine again, splitting her profits by percentage to Venrirr per their arrangement, and splitting her time with experimentation.
“Would you enjoy the life, were you to allow yourself the pleasure of it?” Aran remembered Arkatorn’s honest question, and the slow music, low and steady in her ears. She remembered the feel of skin under her hand, the heat warming the gloves she’d been wearing. Hands ran through her hair again, gripping the strands and tugging as if that would gather her wandering wits.
It was a question Aran didn’t even need to answer. She’d been so far into self-denial, focusing on protecting others and only learning to help them, that she knew the answer - what had she done since standing back from her attempt to flee? The woman had slowly thrown herself into research for the sake of it, research for no reason but that it intrigued her, letting curiosity guide her as she went through and mapped out possibilities. She wanted to have someone to share her ideas with, someone to bounce them off of who’d point out the flaws in her reasoning; Aran had already found herself talking aloud again, muttering notions as she directed the servants.
She’d found their presence comfortable, dismissible. She took them for granted, slowly falling back into the pattern of giving them fewer requests and more orders. Patterns she’d thought were erased were back as if she’d never spent time as a Jedi, revelling in emotions and finding them, again, as natural to use as breathing.
Her hands uncurled, fingers lacing together and resting her forehead against the digits. Arkatorn had picked up the acolytes she had asked for, because she knew if she wanted to protect herself and others she needed to be able to get past the defenses of a force sensitives. But- she stopped.
It wasn’t really for someone else anymore was it? She could be honest in her solitude, even if the realization wouldn’t be told to anyone else. She wasn’t doing this - this study, this control attempt - for someone else. Of course it could be used to protect someone, but she was doing this for the sake of it, wasn’t she? She was studying and practicing for herself, because she wanted to and because it intrigued her.
What was she doing then? Aran stood up, hiding the shaking in her hands by balling them into fists. She was choosing. She was living. She was living for herself though, shifting the focus of her actions so that they weren’t always on behalf of someone else. She wasn’t studying to save someone, protect someone, or help someone, she was studying because she wanted to and because she was bored - and the woman couldn’t find it in herself to feel doing something selfish was inherently wrong.
You have to do this, Aran. For yourself. You have to stop lying and accept who and what you really are. Haunting her mind was the soft question of what she would do when she was finally let go, because the decision was outside of her hands. Or maybe- she thudded her head once against the wall of the room she was coming to think of as her own, little tensions starting to build in her mind again.
Everything used to center around the attempts to help people, however poorly those attempts ended up going - and her track record was horrendous. Sverdas was merely the last in a long line of failed attempts to save someone, someone who didn’t always want the help. Was it worth helping someone when they didn’t need to be saved? Was Arkatorn right, was her desire to help merely protecting the value she placed on a relationship?
Was it a weakness she needed to change?
Another thud, head against the wall, and she sighed.
You suggested this, Aran recalled.. And she had, the almost musing comment one she meant to remind herself. If this was going to work against a Jedi, a shadow, as a method of defense then she needed to be able to control a sensitive. If she was going to protect herself and try to fight against the vulnerability that she had, get a jump on a Jedi before they reached for her mind and its absent defenses, then she needed to do this.
For herself.
The small troupe of acolytes Arkatorn had picked up were in a line in front of the woman, staring defiantly or fearfully at her. She knew she looked nothing like the part she was starting to play, the rugged vest still there, the knife removed from her boot; she looked like a ruffian and nothing that the acolytes should fear.
But some of them did. Some of them could feel her presence in the Force and Aran didn’t know if she was relieved they were fearful or worried, knowing that it meant she’d crossed those lines. But what good is holding the shaky ground between light and dark when it gets you killed? What good is holding back from being able to defend myself? Aran shook her head, gesturing for one of the acolytes to step forward.
Once the Miralukan would’ve wanted to know their names. She would’ve asked them if they objected to helping her. She would’ve been kind and polite, setting them at ease with pleasant words and inviting them to sit. She would’ve worked with them and helped them defend against her. She would’ve been fair.
What about this is fair? Frustration rose and she stood, stalking towards what looked to be the youngest of the acolytes - the most recent failure. She didn’t know the stories of the people the pureblood had gathered at her request only that he had. They were from Korriban. She shouldn’t care for them, they were training tools. Useful, necessary, but ultimately unimportant to her beyond their immediate purpose.
Think of them as a means, not as people she told herself sternly, feeling the hesitation to act in herself. Hands ran through her hair and she shook the short bangs out, jaw tightening, anger rising - not at the acolytes but at herself. She couldn’t bring herself to act. But it’d be in defense... She fought mentally, hesitation warring with desire.
The weakness was obvious, even to the poorly trained acolytes and one of them got over his fear of her affinity. Maybe he figured that if he defeated or broke her he’d get taken in, trained, raised up. Maybe he figured he could win because she hesitated but the sudden movement was caught, head almost snapping up to study the boy.
Her hand lifted, a bolt of lightning leaving her fingertips and catching the boy in the chest. He screamed, the other acolytes pulling back. There’d been no time for camaraderie and alliances to form so there was no one to try to help him, going to his knees with a scream. She knew what he thought of her, it was written on her face. The servants - or were they slaves? She’d never asked or thought to ask Arkatorn what they were.
Scream for me she taunted the boy, watching him give in to the pain and cry out. But it was easy to do that and it meant nothing for her experiment. She stopped the pain and lighting, letting him get back to his feet, watching him shake from the tremors. Had she over-done it?
No. He would’ve done more than try to run past me. She knew acolytes. She used to use them as fodder for her experiments and fighting, she knew how they would swarm weakness. And she’d displayed weakness.
You know better she chided herself. “Let’s play, child.” And the boy bristled, as she knew he would. She didn’t need to tell them what to do. They were swirling emotions and determination, uncertainty, fear, apprehension, and she could taste it. She gave a wiggle of fingers before her hand outstretched again, catching the acolyte in the chest again. And this time he fought her control, raw power rising to resist her pain, untrained but still enough. He had been sent to Korriban, after all - he had the potential. He was flawed, but he’d had the potential.
She didn’t move but her own attention sharpened in response, bringing her focus to bear. Will fought power, Aran wanting to break his untrained power, forcing her will over his body. He jerked in pain but the movements were uncontrolled, unrefined, resistive. And then she felt herself grow angry as it didn’t work properly and she channeled that anger into her attack, feeding the emotions and knitting them in until it was enough.
The moment when his jerking stopped was heralded by a shrill feeling of fear from his mind, fear she reached out and added to her arsenal. The moment when he stopped moving and barely jerked under the lighting, screaming his agony for the room to hear and their fear grew, was a glorious one. It was like a break in the clouds as she felt the change, the difference between making the servants move and stopping his motions. It was an order of magnitude of control between the servants and the acolyte, feeling the subversion of his muscles as a victory. She wondered if this level of effort would grow easier, but now...
...she let her control break, the acolyte sagging. He almost sobbed but her expression was uncaring. He’s a tool, a training implement and nothing more. That’s what they all are. Tools. She took a step forward, motioning for the acolyte to stand. There was a slow but growing sense of glee as she studied the group, feeling their strengths.
She made the male scream again. Then she forced him to his knees, feeling the strength of his mind as he rebelled and tried to break her control over his own body. It was a struggle, a constant battle, a challenge that she rose and slowly started to meet. Sweat soaked her jacket and her hand shook before she finally had to stop.
They were sobbing when she released them, Aran putting her back to a wall. No weakness now. She refused to show them weakness after making them cry.
The defiant male kept his head lowered now, the lesson temporarily driven home. She could read the roil of his emotions though and knew she’d need to do it again. He’d be the challenge to keep controlled, the Miralukan giving the acolytes a dark grin, teeth bared in the expression.
In a few hours she’d come back and repeat the process. Now that they knew what she was doing she expected resistance. She wanted them to have the time to formulate tricks and traps. She wanted them to think, to react, and to resist.
Aran wanted, no needed them to prove a challenge.
Ciphered Holos
Gingerly she felt her jaw where Ark's boot had slammed into the side of her face, feeling the pulped tissue with probing fingers before she silently began to heal the damage without comment; the night hadn't gone how she'd planned. If it'd gone how she'd planned it, she'd have been flying the Bucket back to Nar, back to her friends. She wouldn't have knelt before Arkatorn, knowing he was going to attack her and unable to block, to rise, to defend herself. Fingers kept up a light pressure and the pain from her own healing drew a hiss of breath from the woman before she slumped against the closest wall.
She should've kept the datapad at least. Something to keep notes on, distract herself from the circling thoughts running full-tilt around her mind. She felt fractured mentally, damaged aside from the physical bruises she slowly tended, the defeat raw and edged in pain. It wasn't even the physical defeat, the inevitable end to the short confrontation when Arkatorn's patience had snapped and he'd stopped playing the plaintive questioning and helpful confidant. Her mind and emotions were raw and battered and shattered, Aran hearing her own broken admission every time her thoughts stilled.
I don't want to die like this.
She didn't want to die from seeing someone she'd counted as a friend - one more time - do what they decided was better and set her up. For arrest, for imprisonment, for whatever was better for her than letting her be. She didn't want to die knowing she'd become nothing more than a disposable disappointment, finally serving out what purpose she had to the people she'd bled for; she didn't want to die in the shame of captivity, an executed prisoner who'd gone the step too far.
Most of her friends - her old friends, the ones who'd been the first to turn their backs on her, to tell her she was dead to them - had thought she'd had a death wish, disregarding her safety and the wisdom of her peers to do what she thought was best. And maybe, she felt the tissue under her fingers returning to normal and the cracks spidering the bone closing and healing, they were right. Maybe she'd ignored the advice and wisdom from her friends because she knew better, and knew the risk was only to herself and some of them wouldn't have minded if her name had been on the lists of those who didn't make it back from a mission or task.
But she didn't want to die. Not like this, a crushed and broken then discarded toy. She didn't want to die, tossed aside again. Abandoned. Finally seeing the faith in her friends repaid with turned backs, cold shoulders. The precious few she had left Arkatorn was right - with everything she'd done could she lie to herself that they'd stick around, let her remain in their company? Would they understand or accept? If she'd gone back would she find herself at the other side of a blaster, surrounded by jedi again, finally deemed too much of a risk to be allowed to continue, told it was for her own good - it was a what-if that'd haunt her, knowing that was part of why she'd cracked.
I don't want to die like this- and that meant so many things. She didn't want to die with her head bowed to the victor. She'd once dreamed that death would come after she'd finally done something that was enough, enough that the past had been atoned for. But that was impossible, unattainable. Now she wanted to live but she scrambled for something to live for. Maybe... maybe it was time to put aside the devotion to an abstract idea and live because she wanted to.
Aran's hand dropped, shoulders caved inwards as her head rested against her knees. Something had driven her to take Arkatorn's hand that second time, some reason she was still breathing. "They would break you down while I would raise you up." And he was right, wasn't he? Her blind faith, her frail hopes all rested on the fact that her friends would accept her but she told them the half-truths that allowed her to keep that precious illusion. She didn't want to die for the delusion she kept herself in.
"I won't try to escape again." The frantic flight from his ship, bluffing her way through the planet's checkpoints to reach the spaceport she'd first docked the Bucket on, the self-congratulatory cheering as she'd stayed that one step ahead - it'd ended in Arkatorn already waiting on her ship, waiting for her with palpable disappointment. The mockery, the honest confusion as they'd spoken, the laughter. The pain, as his lightning had hit her and run through her body - and his questions. His statement that this was what friendship was, wasn't it. The pain, intolerance, scorn, mockery - because it was what she took from her friends; why should it be any different from him, too? And just when she'd been certain he'd toss in the towel as everyone else had done he'd waited, giving her choice.
He'd humiliated her. He'd broken her thoughts and free will. He'd killed her pet, kidnapped a friend, let her make herself into a joke for his amusement. Even then she believed him when he'd said that he in some measure and manner cared for her, because he didn't kill her when he so easily could have. And she didn't want to die, throat squeezing tight from emotions racing as hot as blood. It'd been hard to leave the Bucket, walk down its ramp and wait for Arkatorn to follow her. It'd been hard to lock the ship and turn, falling into step as he led the way, walking as normally as possible to salvage what pride she had left, falling into silence for the trip back to his ship.
In a thousand little ways it'd have been easier if Arkatorn had taken the choice from her but that would've given her one more lie to tell herself. When they'd arrived back at the ship she hadn't settled her emotions, shaking her head at the offer - again - of materials to study. Our people echoed dully, head finally lifting, arms unwrapping from around herself. She hadn't changed, had she? She was the same woman who over a decade ago had reveled in the destruction of the old Temple. So why let the lies hold her back still? Why hold herself back for friendships she knew hampered her, because when she acted to protect them it always was a step too far? Doc's gang would be a step too far for them, maybe even for Sriia. Would they find out?
She turned the emotions inwards, mixed with her thoughts. She was willing to burn the world for her friends, before, to set everything aside to help them. Even when she knew they wouldn't all have done the same, she had still been willing to do it. Now the world was a darkening place and maybe Arkatorn was still right, that she was so afraid of being alone that as long as someone called her a friend she'd let them use her. She knew he was right, already, a fracture in her thoughts again and she nearly let the feelings consume her before she curled a hand into a fist.
She could choose. She had chosen, voluntarily leaving the Bucket. Now she had to choose again, in her own thoughs and for herself, to live. Because she wanted to.
She should've kept the datapad at least. Something to keep notes on, distract herself from the circling thoughts running full-tilt around her mind. She felt fractured mentally, damaged aside from the physical bruises she slowly tended, the defeat raw and edged in pain. It wasn't even the physical defeat, the inevitable end to the short confrontation when Arkatorn's patience had snapped and he'd stopped playing the plaintive questioning and helpful confidant. Her mind and emotions were raw and battered and shattered, Aran hearing her own broken admission every time her thoughts stilled.
I don't want to die like this.
She didn't want to die from seeing someone she'd counted as a friend - one more time - do what they decided was better and set her up. For arrest, for imprisonment, for whatever was better for her than letting her be. She didn't want to die knowing she'd become nothing more than a disposable disappointment, finally serving out what purpose she had to the people she'd bled for; she didn't want to die in the shame of captivity, an executed prisoner who'd gone the step too far.
Most of her friends - her old friends, the ones who'd been the first to turn their backs on her, to tell her she was dead to them - had thought she'd had a death wish, disregarding her safety and the wisdom of her peers to do what she thought was best. And maybe, she felt the tissue under her fingers returning to normal and the cracks spidering the bone closing and healing, they were right. Maybe she'd ignored the advice and wisdom from her friends because she knew better, and knew the risk was only to herself and some of them wouldn't have minded if her name had been on the lists of those who didn't make it back from a mission or task.
But she didn't want to die. Not like this, a crushed and broken then discarded toy. She didn't want to die, tossed aside again. Abandoned. Finally seeing the faith in her friends repaid with turned backs, cold shoulders. The precious few she had left Arkatorn was right - with everything she'd done could she lie to herself that they'd stick around, let her remain in their company? Would they understand or accept? If she'd gone back would she find herself at the other side of a blaster, surrounded by jedi again, finally deemed too much of a risk to be allowed to continue, told it was for her own good - it was a what-if that'd haunt her, knowing that was part of why she'd cracked.
I don't want to die like this- and that meant so many things. She didn't want to die with her head bowed to the victor. She'd once dreamed that death would come after she'd finally done something that was enough, enough that the past had been atoned for. But that was impossible, unattainable. Now she wanted to live but she scrambled for something to live for. Maybe... maybe it was time to put aside the devotion to an abstract idea and live because she wanted to.
Aran's hand dropped, shoulders caved inwards as her head rested against her knees. Something had driven her to take Arkatorn's hand that second time, some reason she was still breathing. "They would break you down while I would raise you up." And he was right, wasn't he? Her blind faith, her frail hopes all rested on the fact that her friends would accept her but she told them the half-truths that allowed her to keep that precious illusion. She didn't want to die for the delusion she kept herself in.
"I won't try to escape again." The frantic flight from his ship, bluffing her way through the planet's checkpoints to reach the spaceport she'd first docked the Bucket on, the self-congratulatory cheering as she'd stayed that one step ahead - it'd ended in Arkatorn already waiting on her ship, waiting for her with palpable disappointment. The mockery, the honest confusion as they'd spoken, the laughter. The pain, as his lightning had hit her and run through her body - and his questions. His statement that this was what friendship was, wasn't it. The pain, intolerance, scorn, mockery - because it was what she took from her friends; why should it be any different from him, too? And just when she'd been certain he'd toss in the towel as everyone else had done he'd waited, giving her choice.
He'd humiliated her. He'd broken her thoughts and free will. He'd killed her pet, kidnapped a friend, let her make herself into a joke for his amusement. Even then she believed him when he'd said that he in some measure and manner cared for her, because he didn't kill her when he so easily could have. And she didn't want to die, throat squeezing tight from emotions racing as hot as blood. It'd been hard to leave the Bucket, walk down its ramp and wait for Arkatorn to follow her. It'd been hard to lock the ship and turn, falling into step as he led the way, walking as normally as possible to salvage what pride she had left, falling into silence for the trip back to his ship.
In a thousand little ways it'd have been easier if Arkatorn had taken the choice from her but that would've given her one more lie to tell herself. When they'd arrived back at the ship she hadn't settled her emotions, shaking her head at the offer - again - of materials to study. Our people echoed dully, head finally lifting, arms unwrapping from around herself. She hadn't changed, had she? She was the same woman who over a decade ago had reveled in the destruction of the old Temple. So why let the lies hold her back still? Why hold herself back for friendships she knew hampered her, because when she acted to protect them it always was a step too far? Doc's gang would be a step too far for them, maybe even for Sriia. Would they find out?
She turned the emotions inwards, mixed with her thoughts. She was willing to burn the world for her friends, before, to set everything aside to help them. Even when she knew they wouldn't all have done the same, she had still been willing to do it. Now the world was a darkening place and maybe Arkatorn was still right, that she was so afraid of being alone that as long as someone called her a friend she'd let them use her. She knew he was right, already, a fracture in her thoughts again and she nearly let the feelings consume her before she curled a hand into a fist.
She could choose. She had chosen, voluntarily leaving the Bucket. Now she had to choose again, in her own thoughs and for herself, to live. Because she wanted to.
Ciphered Holos
She hadn't yet gotten the itch in her feet, a fact the Miralukan gave small thanks for given the ship was reasonably small and she was more than effectively trapped on it. Her hands traced the walls as if she needed that touch, fingertips feeling the contours and indentations in the hull before she pulled a glove off, pressing the palm of her hand against the wall, letting out a breath before her forehead rested against the wall.
"You can't fault me for doing what you yourself would do," he'd said, and Aran had felt it as effectively as a chain. Until she could break the control - and how could she when the after-effects of Proteus' serum were still untreated? - she felt the choice was stripped. But no she wasn't a prisoner, just an enforced guest. "If you want to be a prisoner I can hand you over to the Republic-" and the woman felt tension in her shoulders again.
It'd been mere hours after getting Sverdas back, the humiliation of being a joke again, the brunt of a fantastical joke for Shadow and Arkatorn and his companions, before she'd found herself in the Bucket plugging in coordinates. It was a whim, a fancy, to head to Imperial space, wondering what in the galaxy she was doing there until she'd seen something familiar. Heard a familiar voice. And then it'd made sense again and the shame had been back in full force, head rising and emotions snapping.
She'd been a good joke. She'd been their humor and entertainment enough - she wouldn't rail that it was unfair because they were sith and cared about being fair as much as she cared what color of shirt she grabbed. But if she wouldn't rail she also had learned at least something from the experience; she didn't try to fight directly. She just tried to turn, heading back to the ramp of the Bucket intent on making at least a slightly dignified exit. He'd had his fun - again - and shown she had no power.
None.
It'd have been more galling if she hadn't been trying to leave. But she'd gotten as far as putting in codes for the Bucket's door before she'd found herself turning around again. She'd come to a polite stop just short of the pureblood without realizing it, seeing a shift of Force as the Bucket's ramp lifted and she stood there.
It struck her how easily it'd happened. She'd always been able to fight, to rebel, to resist before but she had no way to do more than try and break the control after. And that had gone so well the night they were rescuing Sverdas... She'd managed a spasm of her hand that night, knowing she wanted to attack them, to escape and unable to act on the disconnected feelings. It’d gone as poorly as it could possibly have gone - the only way that ‘rescue’ could’ve gone worse would’ve been if Sverdas had stayed instead of accompanying them.
By managing to stick to civility she'd forcefully put her feelings aside, set them away to focus on what was quickly becoming her goal during her stay on Arkatorn’s large ship. Get free. Become stronger to get free. Be less of a joke and break free. Amass enough power that she could resist the domination of her thoughts... Somehow get free long enough to maybe escape and-
And what? Get herself killed? Get executed or carted off by an enterprising jedi shadow who did to her what Arkatorn himself aptly demonstrated was possible? And if Arkatorn made good on his threat to put the lies to her friends into the open, would she have anything worth going back to? Would she have a friend left who wouldn’t be willing to turn her over, or turn their shoulder to her? Would even Sriia be forgiving, given what Arkatorn had done to Sverdas- first kidnapping then some alteration they hadn’t had the time to unravel yet? She’d still taken his offered hand, accepted his help as he’d first phrased it, the offer he’d made at once different and a repeat.
If she had been stronger she might’ve saved Sverdas in the first place. If she got stronger she’d be able to protect her friends. As long as she kept herself focused on actions for someone else, she’d avoid the slope she often found herself falling down, and avoid power just for power’s sake.
She’d saved Doc, hadn’t she? Arkatorn’s comments had awakened the desire to play with the technique, Aran finding that with a screaming servant her target she was able to identify the over-ride for pain much faster. Even if she’d still hurt the servant until then but the emotions had been... so tempting. The terror had increased when his motions were no longer pain-filled but still outside of his control. And it had been so relaxing again, finding the lure and appeal of the dark side seeping into her until the actions had needed to be reined back before she found herself playing for the sake of it.
Lines, those small lines she needed to hold. She could grow stronger, more powerful, without falling to the desires to pursue power for the sheer sake of it. She had to be able to maintain that division or she’d erase another defining line between herself and her company. Company she found... almost as relaxing.
Almost as relaxing and engaging as the Lorrdian dancer had been. Confusion rose up among the myriad of emotions then as she remembered the feel of her muscles, her body. The way she’d moved too sinfully, the way she’d danced and shifted, leading but moving a-pace with Aran’s own efforts to keep up. She pulled her hand off the wall quickly, lifting the palm up as if eyes were there to stare at it.
It’d been so long since she’d touched. Before her and Xan had split, certainly, she’d pulled away from him. Her avoidance of touch meant that a little tap against a shoulder startled her but she’d felt so relaxed, so comfortable... and she’d wanted to touch; she’d been smiling she remembered, her experiment successful and the servant released. She’d wanted to relax that one degree more, feeling skin near skin in the ways that meant power and comfort twinned together in her mind, and this time the invitation hadn’t been turned down. She’d even forgotten Arkatorn’s presence after setting her ice-wine aside, the invitation accepted.
And touch had been so good. It’d been everything Aran treasured - intimate, personal, trusting. Exciting to match pace, the twisting of muscles as she moved with the dancer, letting herself embrace the moment and forget everything. While they’d danced she’d forgotten Arkatorn, she’d forgotten Sveradas, Sriia, Akkai, Bennet, Torlem, the Republic, the Empire - she’d just been.
When the dancing had ended she’d come back to herself with a feeling of rightness still settled against her skin. She was more relaxed and content in that moment than she’d been since fleeing Tython. It was disconcerting that she had been sitting next to what was classically her enemy, the pureblood preventing her departure and usurping her free will to keep her safe, but she felt settled. Even though she reminded herself what Arkatorn had done to her and her friends it didn’t shake the ease she’d found herself falling in to.
Ideas were coming back to her, ideas of how to manipulate the nervous system, ideas of how to make her control more subtle, and she wanted to know if she could control multiple bodies. But that required practice. It required living subjects to test her control on, test the refinement - how long it took her to get control of the body needed to be improved still. She needed to see if she could interrupt the impulses without having to induce her own lightning, make the control takeover be faster, more complete. Could she force words from a mouth? It’d require more control over the mind while also controlling the body - that might be more than she wanted to expend effort on just yet. She couldn’t see an application of that now, though...
She closed her hand into a fist, slamming it against the hull suddenly. What was she doing?! Here she was contemplating how to control... living beings.
She was thinking of the dancer again, of applications of the Force that had nothing to do with defense but instead offense... she shook her head. She patted her belt, pulling off the comm and cursing softly. It’d taken her this long to think of it and the one she needed she’d left on the Bucket. And her datapad was there too.
The suggested trip to Yavin Four wasn’t such a bad idea... if she could persuade Arkatorn to let her take her ship. A promise to not do more than fly to the planet... it might work?
Then she laughed.
What she needed to do was convinced Arkatorn to let her go and send her back without killing her. Otherwise he could let her fly the Bucket - but prevent her from wanting to talk to anyone during her trip. He could take the desire the wrong way and make good on his threat - was that what he’d done to Sverdas? - and remove her complicated feelings about her friends, to give her the clarity he threatened.
She needed to get out before she was so confused - about everything - that she’d take some offer of clarity to see if it’d help.
"You can't fault me for doing what you yourself would do," he'd said, and Aran had felt it as effectively as a chain. Until she could break the control - and how could she when the after-effects of Proteus' serum were still untreated? - she felt the choice was stripped. But no she wasn't a prisoner, just an enforced guest. "If you want to be a prisoner I can hand you over to the Republic-" and the woman felt tension in her shoulders again.
It'd been mere hours after getting Sverdas back, the humiliation of being a joke again, the brunt of a fantastical joke for Shadow and Arkatorn and his companions, before she'd found herself in the Bucket plugging in coordinates. It was a whim, a fancy, to head to Imperial space, wondering what in the galaxy she was doing there until she'd seen something familiar. Heard a familiar voice. And then it'd made sense again and the shame had been back in full force, head rising and emotions snapping.
She'd been a good joke. She'd been their humor and entertainment enough - she wouldn't rail that it was unfair because they were sith and cared about being fair as much as she cared what color of shirt she grabbed. But if she wouldn't rail she also had learned at least something from the experience; she didn't try to fight directly. She just tried to turn, heading back to the ramp of the Bucket intent on making at least a slightly dignified exit. He'd had his fun - again - and shown she had no power.
None.
It'd have been more galling if she hadn't been trying to leave. But she'd gotten as far as putting in codes for the Bucket's door before she'd found herself turning around again. She'd come to a polite stop just short of the pureblood without realizing it, seeing a shift of Force as the Bucket's ramp lifted and she stood there.
It struck her how easily it'd happened. She'd always been able to fight, to rebel, to resist before but she had no way to do more than try and break the control after. And that had gone so well the night they were rescuing Sverdas... She'd managed a spasm of her hand that night, knowing she wanted to attack them, to escape and unable to act on the disconnected feelings. It’d gone as poorly as it could possibly have gone - the only way that ‘rescue’ could’ve gone worse would’ve been if Sverdas had stayed instead of accompanying them.
By managing to stick to civility she'd forcefully put her feelings aside, set them away to focus on what was quickly becoming her goal during her stay on Arkatorn’s large ship. Get free. Become stronger to get free. Be less of a joke and break free. Amass enough power that she could resist the domination of her thoughts... Somehow get free long enough to maybe escape and-
And what? Get herself killed? Get executed or carted off by an enterprising jedi shadow who did to her what Arkatorn himself aptly demonstrated was possible? And if Arkatorn made good on his threat to put the lies to her friends into the open, would she have anything worth going back to? Would she have a friend left who wouldn’t be willing to turn her over, or turn their shoulder to her? Would even Sriia be forgiving, given what Arkatorn had done to Sverdas- first kidnapping then some alteration they hadn’t had the time to unravel yet? She’d still taken his offered hand, accepted his help as he’d first phrased it, the offer he’d made at once different and a repeat.
If she had been stronger she might’ve saved Sverdas in the first place. If she got stronger she’d be able to protect her friends. As long as she kept herself focused on actions for someone else, she’d avoid the slope she often found herself falling down, and avoid power just for power’s sake.
She’d saved Doc, hadn’t she? Arkatorn’s comments had awakened the desire to play with the technique, Aran finding that with a screaming servant her target she was able to identify the over-ride for pain much faster. Even if she’d still hurt the servant until then but the emotions had been... so tempting. The terror had increased when his motions were no longer pain-filled but still outside of his control. And it had been so relaxing again, finding the lure and appeal of the dark side seeping into her until the actions had needed to be reined back before she found herself playing for the sake of it.
Lines, those small lines she needed to hold. She could grow stronger, more powerful, without falling to the desires to pursue power for the sheer sake of it. She had to be able to maintain that division or she’d erase another defining line between herself and her company. Company she found... almost as relaxing.
Almost as relaxing and engaging as the Lorrdian dancer had been. Confusion rose up among the myriad of emotions then as she remembered the feel of her muscles, her body. The way she’d moved too sinfully, the way she’d danced and shifted, leading but moving a-pace with Aran’s own efforts to keep up. She pulled her hand off the wall quickly, lifting the palm up as if eyes were there to stare at it.
It’d been so long since she’d touched. Before her and Xan had split, certainly, she’d pulled away from him. Her avoidance of touch meant that a little tap against a shoulder startled her but she’d felt so relaxed, so comfortable... and she’d wanted to touch; she’d been smiling she remembered, her experiment successful and the servant released. She’d wanted to relax that one degree more, feeling skin near skin in the ways that meant power and comfort twinned together in her mind, and this time the invitation hadn’t been turned down. She’d even forgotten Arkatorn’s presence after setting her ice-wine aside, the invitation accepted.
And touch had been so good. It’d been everything Aran treasured - intimate, personal, trusting. Exciting to match pace, the twisting of muscles as she moved with the dancer, letting herself embrace the moment and forget everything. While they’d danced she’d forgotten Arkatorn, she’d forgotten Sveradas, Sriia, Akkai, Bennet, Torlem, the Republic, the Empire - she’d just been.
When the dancing had ended she’d come back to herself with a feeling of rightness still settled against her skin. She was more relaxed and content in that moment than she’d been since fleeing Tython. It was disconcerting that she had been sitting next to what was classically her enemy, the pureblood preventing her departure and usurping her free will to keep her safe, but she felt settled. Even though she reminded herself what Arkatorn had done to her and her friends it didn’t shake the ease she’d found herself falling in to.
Ideas were coming back to her, ideas of how to manipulate the nervous system, ideas of how to make her control more subtle, and she wanted to know if she could control multiple bodies. But that required practice. It required living subjects to test her control on, test the refinement - how long it took her to get control of the body needed to be improved still. She needed to see if she could interrupt the impulses without having to induce her own lightning, make the control takeover be faster, more complete. Could she force words from a mouth? It’d require more control over the mind while also controlling the body - that might be more than she wanted to expend effort on just yet. She couldn’t see an application of that now, though...
She closed her hand into a fist, slamming it against the hull suddenly. What was she doing?! Here she was contemplating how to control... living beings.
She was thinking of the dancer again, of applications of the Force that had nothing to do with defense but instead offense... she shook her head. She patted her belt, pulling off the comm and cursing softly. It’d taken her this long to think of it and the one she needed she’d left on the Bucket. And her datapad was there too.
The suggested trip to Yavin Four wasn’t such a bad idea... if she could persuade Arkatorn to let her take her ship. A promise to not do more than fly to the planet... it might work?
Then she laughed.
What she needed to do was convinced Arkatorn to let her go and send her back without killing her. Otherwise he could let her fly the Bucket - but prevent her from wanting to talk to anyone during her trip. He could take the desire the wrong way and make good on his threat - was that what he’d done to Sverdas? - and remove her complicated feelings about her friends, to give her the clarity he threatened.
She needed to get out before she was so confused - about everything - that she’d take some offer of clarity to see if it’d help.
Ciphered Holos
"This is dangerous ain't it," Doc asked quietly as the Miralukan sat down, perched on the edge of his chair. She'd switched her hair he noted, the short pixie-cut half curled without the familiar weight of her longer hair to pull it flatter, hitting unevenly across her face, some part brushing shoulders while others barely hiding where eyes would've been on another species. Fingerless gloves on her hands he noticed, a long vibro-knife poking out the top of her armored boots. vest and mis-matched trousers, rugged materials that looks less ostentatious than her old half-armored coat had come off.
She finally looked less like a smuggling business woman and more like an occupant of the moon; Doc felt something break at the sheer dangerous air she was starting to pull, as if she was slowly on the edge of walking out and sinking into the darkness she'd spent so long rallying against. He'd never wanted to see her look like the edges had been filed sharp again, the same desperate air paired with bloody determination to make things Right. Whatever Right was to her now that was - it seemed to still be tempered by the desire to help.
For how long?
Aran shifted, adjusting the mask on her face over slim lenses, hands curling into fists. "You said someone was trying to squeeze you Doc, and I want to know who. Simple question." Her ire was raised at the mere thought of someone trying to blackmail Doc and his clinic, especially given how coincidental the blackmail attempt was.
Doc breathed out a wreath of smoke, coughing as he sat down. "What'll happen to them once I tell you who and where?"
"They'll stop." Her tone was edged with finality.
Doc felt a cold sweat at the base of his neck, reaching back to wipe the perspiration off. "Y' talking about murder."
"It's Nar Shaddaa," the woman countered sternly. "If they don't get stopped by me it'll be someone else, somewhere else." Her tone shifted to one Doc rarely was able to refuse, a soft plea. "You're my friend, Doc. I'm not going to let someone take advantage of you and I- I need to do this."
And Doc sighed as she knew he would and finally gave her the gang's location, even though she could've danced into his mind and taken the knowledge from him. But he was a friend and you didn't do that to them; you burned the world over and through for them, to keep them safe. Aran's hands curled tighter before she forced them to relax running the palms over her trousers as if the motion would soothe, calm. Her emotions were still running high, free and unburied.
It was odd to look at the world through the glint and glimmer of them again but even if she could've sunken them back into the recesses of her mind she wouldn't have - Sverdas still needed help, needed to be found and freed.
--
The first death had been the hardest. She'd had to cast her mind back to remember Doc - the way his hands had shaken, the way he'd broken his silent promises and pulled out from his stash and shot himself up while she'd been visiting - to remind herself why she was there. Why she was stepping past the soft but cold flesh, kneeling down for a single act of kindness to the dead and damned by closing their eyes with a brush of fingers from forehead to cheek.
She'd ripped through one man's mind and waited for him to start to scream to draw some out of cover, perched and waiting. Because it was easier to use one of their (albeit dying) own to draw the gang from the bowels of their safe haven than it was to play piper to their rodent. She'd taken no pleasure in horrifying the man's mind until it fractured under the sheer terror, but his emotions had been...
Powerful. And each death had grown easier as she worked through the gang, not even drawing a weapon as she tore through their ranks as easily as she once had before. They weren't force users, they weren't even particularly organized, but she left nothing but corpses and the dying - the woman ripping their life from them almost automatically.
And then she came inside their headquarters, to the heart of their forces. Now it was time to practice the technique she'd decided to work on, the reason she'd gone to ask Doc for someone to take out. She hadn't realized she'd have the chance to help her own friend- but that made this righteous.
She didn't even have to push aside a feeling as she turned to the first of the security forces inside. First she lifted a hand, a bolt of lightning leaving her fingertips. The emotion behind it was easier to control now, easier to summon - and as the lightning hit she twisted it, the flickers vanishing until it was a small arc over the screaming man's body but not a steady stream. Now he jerked as Aran frowned in concentration, her fingers still outstretched and flickering with Force - then he moved a step closer to her.
It was working. Her grin was frightening - in the midst of the dead, her victim screaming as she forced him to take step by agonizing step she smiled almost childlike at the wonder of getting it to work. Lightning occasionally sparked across his form as he took one slow agonizing step after another, screaming from the sheer pain her experiment was causing but he moved.
A flick of her fingers and he danced. Then she curled her fingers into a fist and he dropped with one last wrenching cry.
It worked. She was unaware that the smile was still on her face as she turned to the next member of the gang, this time her efforts - though just as pain-filled - were more fluid, the marionette of a human moving almost naturally. She knew she could make this pain-free as well but there was a lesson to it. A reason for the pain. A reason she set nerves on fire, using her knowledge of dulling their receptors to instead inflame them.
By the time there was only one other person alive in the base aside from herself she had managed to make one man strangle himself to death. Another had snapped their own neck. The last one had wet himself in fear as she simply walked up. When he fell to the ground, pleading for mercy, Aran knelt down, reaching a finger out to stroke his cheek.
"Anything you want-" the man began to plead but Aran shushed him, a finger to still his lips.
"-it's personal. You threatened a friend of mine." She let the man whimper before shushing him again. "With your gang dead the message is going to be pretty clear. But I'll repeat it so when they slice your security footage up it's apparent. I protect my friends. I cherish them, and I'll kill for them. And I'll do it over and over and over again," she said softly.
"I won't go after your friend, we won't-"
She shushed him again, putting her hand against his cheek now and a spark of lightning across her palm before he danced and screamed. She let him scream until his throat was bloody, dancing under her direction until she took some pity on him. Absently she hummed an old tune, half-forgotten with missing words but familiar, as she made his fingers dig into his skin until blood soaked his shirt, holes and screaming as he dug into his own flesh.
Shaking blood from her hand then wiping it off her face Aran turned, letting the corpse at last drop to the ground with a wet thud. She'd challenged herself by making the man rip his own flesh off, chunk by chunk, until his fingers had become ineffective. He'd screamed when the nails had been pulled off from repeatedly digging deep into muscle. She'd patted his cheek and drove him onwards.
Turning on her heel she slowly sauntered out of the gang's now-empty headquarters.
She finally looked less like a smuggling business woman and more like an occupant of the moon; Doc felt something break at the sheer dangerous air she was starting to pull, as if she was slowly on the edge of walking out and sinking into the darkness she'd spent so long rallying against. He'd never wanted to see her look like the edges had been filed sharp again, the same desperate air paired with bloody determination to make things Right. Whatever Right was to her now that was - it seemed to still be tempered by the desire to help.
For how long?
Aran shifted, adjusting the mask on her face over slim lenses, hands curling into fists. "You said someone was trying to squeeze you Doc, and I want to know who. Simple question." Her ire was raised at the mere thought of someone trying to blackmail Doc and his clinic, especially given how coincidental the blackmail attempt was.
Doc breathed out a wreath of smoke, coughing as he sat down. "What'll happen to them once I tell you who and where?"
"They'll stop." Her tone was edged with finality.
Doc felt a cold sweat at the base of his neck, reaching back to wipe the perspiration off. "Y' talking about murder."
"It's Nar Shaddaa," the woman countered sternly. "If they don't get stopped by me it'll be someone else, somewhere else." Her tone shifted to one Doc rarely was able to refuse, a soft plea. "You're my friend, Doc. I'm not going to let someone take advantage of you and I- I need to do this."
And Doc sighed as she knew he would and finally gave her the gang's location, even though she could've danced into his mind and taken the knowledge from him. But he was a friend and you didn't do that to them; you burned the world over and through for them, to keep them safe. Aran's hands curled tighter before she forced them to relax running the palms over her trousers as if the motion would soothe, calm. Her emotions were still running high, free and unburied.
It was odd to look at the world through the glint and glimmer of them again but even if she could've sunken them back into the recesses of her mind she wouldn't have - Sverdas still needed help, needed to be found and freed.
--
The first death had been the hardest. She'd had to cast her mind back to remember Doc - the way his hands had shaken, the way he'd broken his silent promises and pulled out from his stash and shot himself up while she'd been visiting - to remind herself why she was there. Why she was stepping past the soft but cold flesh, kneeling down for a single act of kindness to the dead and damned by closing their eyes with a brush of fingers from forehead to cheek.
She'd ripped through one man's mind and waited for him to start to scream to draw some out of cover, perched and waiting. Because it was easier to use one of their (albeit dying) own to draw the gang from the bowels of their safe haven than it was to play piper to their rodent. She'd taken no pleasure in horrifying the man's mind until it fractured under the sheer terror, but his emotions had been...
Powerful. And each death had grown easier as she worked through the gang, not even drawing a weapon as she tore through their ranks as easily as she once had before. They weren't force users, they weren't even particularly organized, but she left nothing but corpses and the dying - the woman ripping their life from them almost automatically.
And then she came inside their headquarters, to the heart of their forces. Now it was time to practice the technique she'd decided to work on, the reason she'd gone to ask Doc for someone to take out. She hadn't realized she'd have the chance to help her own friend- but that made this righteous.
She didn't even have to push aside a feeling as she turned to the first of the security forces inside. First she lifted a hand, a bolt of lightning leaving her fingertips. The emotion behind it was easier to control now, easier to summon - and as the lightning hit she twisted it, the flickers vanishing until it was a small arc over the screaming man's body but not a steady stream. Now he jerked as Aran frowned in concentration, her fingers still outstretched and flickering with Force - then he moved a step closer to her.
It was working. Her grin was frightening - in the midst of the dead, her victim screaming as she forced him to take step by agonizing step she smiled almost childlike at the wonder of getting it to work. Lightning occasionally sparked across his form as he took one slow agonizing step after another, screaming from the sheer pain her experiment was causing but he moved.
A flick of her fingers and he danced. Then she curled her fingers into a fist and he dropped with one last wrenching cry.
It worked. She was unaware that the smile was still on her face as she turned to the next member of the gang, this time her efforts - though just as pain-filled - were more fluid, the marionette of a human moving almost naturally. She knew she could make this pain-free as well but there was a lesson to it. A reason for the pain. A reason she set nerves on fire, using her knowledge of dulling their receptors to instead inflame them.
By the time there was only one other person alive in the base aside from herself she had managed to make one man strangle himself to death. Another had snapped their own neck. The last one had wet himself in fear as she simply walked up. When he fell to the ground, pleading for mercy, Aran knelt down, reaching a finger out to stroke his cheek.
"Anything you want-" the man began to plead but Aran shushed him, a finger to still his lips.
"-it's personal. You threatened a friend of mine." She let the man whimper before shushing him again. "With your gang dead the message is going to be pretty clear. But I'll repeat it so when they slice your security footage up it's apparent. I protect my friends. I cherish them, and I'll kill for them. And I'll do it over and over and over again," she said softly.
"I won't go after your friend, we won't-"
She shushed him again, putting her hand against his cheek now and a spark of lightning across her palm before he danced and screamed. She let him scream until his throat was bloody, dancing under her direction until she took some pity on him. Absently she hummed an old tune, half-forgotten with missing words but familiar, as she made his fingers dig into his skin until blood soaked his shirt, holes and screaming as he dug into his own flesh.
Shaking blood from her hand then wiping it off her face Aran turned, letting the corpse at last drop to the ground with a wet thud. She'd challenged herself by making the man rip his own flesh off, chunk by chunk, until his fingers had become ineffective. He'd screamed when the nails had been pulled off from repeatedly digging deep into muscle. She'd patted his cheek and drove him onwards.
Turning on her heel she slowly sauntered out of the gang's now-empty headquarters.
Ciphered Holos
Cold.
The hangar was empty and devoid of even the usual sounds that filled it, the chitters and chatters of Sparks.
Sparks.
Aran bowed her head, sliding down with her back to the wall, a choked and muffled sound coming from her throat. It was cruel that of any species she was Miralukan and unable to find the normal release tears seemed to bring the rest of the galaxy. Her throat was closed, a stuttering heave of her shoulders as she pulled arms around her torso, hugging tight. The scent of blood was gone, the walls scrubbed but she knew it was here where she'd gotten one friend killed.
And another kidnapped. That she'd managed to only get a non-sentient killed was cold comfort to what she knew could happen. Would happen.
And there was no way it wasn't her fault. Not this time. It had been her fault, entirely and unequivocally. She wondered if she'd been living in a little bubble, one where the war and its connotations had just refused to penetrate - it was war and she'd ignored it. Because she somehow could get away with ignoring it.
Jedi fought Sith. Sith fought Jedi. Imperials fought the Republic, the Republic fought the Empire. No matter the pleasantries exchanged they were on opposing sides in a conflict she was trying hard to stay out of, to make a profit off of, because she couldn't stand with the Republic and now she couldn't stand against the Empire. But even as she cast her mind back she realized Arkatorn had meant nothing in his attack. It'd been a demonstration. Educational. Impersonal. There'd been no hatred, no spike of emotion heralding the attack it had just been and then it was done.
You must file away the imperfections and she'd seen - watched in stark and utter horror as Arkatorn had drained some measure of emotion from Sverdas. When she'd arrived at Kaas, led there by his once-ally-turned-traitor Shadow, his screams had been unending. She knew those screams, knew what could happen from them, what was happening.
It'd been why she'd omitted to Sriia that Arkatorn was an Alchemist. Which Shadow had told her. Shadow, who'd made two simple rules for their shaky alliance. And then Syose had come up, asking how long it'd be before her plans culminated in angst, violence, destruction, failure.
And then there'd been the little seer, the one who wanted to know. Know what had happened to allow Sverdas to be kidnapped, what had been in the boxes in her hangar. Her remaining collection handed over for that failed shot at getting Sverdas back. A collection which even now was beyond both her and Shadow's reach as he'd apparently sent it along to Kaas where his betrayed ally resided.
Ahn'akiir wanted her to find someone. And she would, as it'd finally pay off the debt she'd owed the former Sith. Akkai- he'd helped her, taken her back to the Mary Sue after Arkatorn had left her twitching, broken, utterly and completely defeated. A broken cur he'd said. Her hands curled unconsciously into fists, unable and unwilling to break the tides of emotions now. She'd given up the ghost of playing a Jedi as she'd told Shadow. Dropped the persona. She would even be willing to drop all of them if it meant getting her friend back.
All the lies, all the deceptions. She didn't know what she'd be left with, losing everything she'd spent years building up. Maybe nothing worthwhile would remain behind.
If you value the misery you call a life now, Aran, be somewhere else...
It had hurt. though she'd been the one to break the bonds when she'd first gone away from the Republic it had hurt, hearing the deathknell on her tongue. From the only person she'd felt close enough to call kin outside of the Miralukan's concept of it.
One more thing lost to her choices. The choking, strangled sound of tearless sobs echoed before even those faded into silent shudders.
The hangar was empty and devoid of even the usual sounds that filled it, the chitters and chatters of Sparks.
Sparks.
Aran bowed her head, sliding down with her back to the wall, a choked and muffled sound coming from her throat. It was cruel that of any species she was Miralukan and unable to find the normal release tears seemed to bring the rest of the galaxy. Her throat was closed, a stuttering heave of her shoulders as she pulled arms around her torso, hugging tight. The scent of blood was gone, the walls scrubbed but she knew it was here where she'd gotten one friend killed.
And another kidnapped. That she'd managed to only get a non-sentient killed was cold comfort to what she knew could happen. Would happen.
And there was no way it wasn't her fault. Not this time. It had been her fault, entirely and unequivocally. She wondered if she'd been living in a little bubble, one where the war and its connotations had just refused to penetrate - it was war and she'd ignored it. Because she somehow could get away with ignoring it.
Jedi fought Sith. Sith fought Jedi. Imperials fought the Republic, the Republic fought the Empire. No matter the pleasantries exchanged they were on opposing sides in a conflict she was trying hard to stay out of, to make a profit off of, because she couldn't stand with the Republic and now she couldn't stand against the Empire. But even as she cast her mind back she realized Arkatorn had meant nothing in his attack. It'd been a demonstration. Educational. Impersonal. There'd been no hatred, no spike of emotion heralding the attack it had just been and then it was done.
You must file away the imperfections and she'd seen - watched in stark and utter horror as Arkatorn had drained some measure of emotion from Sverdas. When she'd arrived at Kaas, led there by his once-ally-turned-traitor Shadow, his screams had been unending. She knew those screams, knew what could happen from them, what was happening.
It'd been why she'd omitted to Sriia that Arkatorn was an Alchemist. Which Shadow had told her. Shadow, who'd made two simple rules for their shaky alliance. And then Syose had come up, asking how long it'd be before her plans culminated in angst, violence, destruction, failure.
And then there'd been the little seer, the one who wanted to know. Know what had happened to allow Sverdas to be kidnapped, what had been in the boxes in her hangar. Her remaining collection handed over for that failed shot at getting Sverdas back. A collection which even now was beyond both her and Shadow's reach as he'd apparently sent it along to Kaas where his betrayed ally resided.
Ahn'akiir wanted her to find someone. And she would, as it'd finally pay off the debt she'd owed the former Sith. Akkai- he'd helped her, taken her back to the Mary Sue after Arkatorn had left her twitching, broken, utterly and completely defeated. A broken cur he'd said. Her hands curled unconsciously into fists, unable and unwilling to break the tides of emotions now. She'd given up the ghost of playing a Jedi as she'd told Shadow. Dropped the persona. She would even be willing to drop all of them if it meant getting her friend back.
All the lies, all the deceptions. She didn't know what she'd be left with, losing everything she'd spent years building up. Maybe nothing worthwhile would remain behind.
If you value the misery you call a life now, Aran, be somewhere else...
It had hurt. though she'd been the one to break the bonds when she'd first gone away from the Republic it had hurt, hearing the deathknell on her tongue. From the only person she'd felt close enough to call kin outside of the Miralukan's concept of it.
One more thing lost to her choices. The choking, strangled sound of tearless sobs echoed before even those faded into silent shudders.
Ciphered Holos
It'd have taken a moron to not have realized that the interconnected network of associates she had were interconnected with each other as well. She still wondered how much Ahn'akiir had actually heard, the Miralukan shifting her position while cradling her arm.
It's centered around Eron, isn't it? Shukla had been silent and non-committal but she'd sensed amusement from Jean at the question, for some reason. She wasn't stupid as much as she came off that way. Dorjan had her and Ahn'akiir investigating Eron's past, she'd found holocrons that the Sith had wanted on his ship - the ship he protected fiercely - the safehouse on Taris that had ended up being as large as a secret base. The elaborate plots, the history - it smacked of a conspiracy to rival a holoflick.
Either they were all in a holoflick or there really was some Big Bad Secret Club happening right under her nose. Her nose twitched. She was hoping for the holoflick, personally.
Her arm still hurt but she leaned against the crate. Her first job for a Sith had been easy. Find their mcguffin, magically lost. The Lord had been white-lipped at delivery but she'd still been able to deliver - a step above the previous mercs that he'd apparently hired. Vycus had been... helpful.
Disquietingly accurate. The encounter with the Sith Miralukan had put a rattle to her cage, making her shore up her 'smuggler' and 'cargo transporter' personas with more trips to the dingiest cantinas she could find. Miralukans were rare in the Empire - a fact which the two had briefly discussed. She also knew that her bluff had been called the moment he'd studied her - but then again, so had his own. Affable - a predator seeking prey. Insightful - wary study.
But when her crate - the mcguffin - had been impounded by the Cartel's presence on Fleet he had stepped in with the authority she couldn't muster in her disguise and given her aid. For being 'more interesting than most of the people' present. With any luck she would be able to avoid running into the Sith again, chaulking the encounter up to her usual luck: bad, with a slice of dangerous. She wasn't certain being considered interesting by someone from the Sphere of Mysteries was a good thing.
Of course, as she was finding out, being an ally to someone from what seemed to be the Sphere of Defense wasn't all that was cracked up to be either. She hadn't yet asked where Venrirr's slice of profits was going to go but she doubted he'd needed the credits for his steak dinners. With a tap she fired off the contract. She should make sure he signed it. And then she pulled his own information up. She had two payments to send him now, with a third on the way.
Allies. She wanted to find Dimmy's name now, to put one more card into the proverbial deck she had in her games with him. She really should let Sriia muck in her head to fix the associations she had but Dimmy had become something of a ..... friend. In her mind at least. If Dimmy needed or asked for her help, would she give it to him?
Nearby Sparks slept. She hadn't been willing to use any blood but her own but the work had been messier than she remembered. She was as tired as ever though, wishing fleetingly for a duel to pull Force from an opponent. But the Sith had been written flawlessly and the Force twisted under her hands with few hiccups, closing her ears to the short screeches before Sparks had adjusted.
Now the acklay slept, her brief work to augment his natural affinity for using the Force strengthened. She'd have to work with him to see what it was she'd really managed but it was needed. She felt safer knowing she'd done something to help him, making him at least a smidge better. With a grimace she pulled Force around her wounded arm, slowly knitting the flesh and tissue back, replacing blood lost all while biting back a grunt of pain.
She just had to survive long enough for Akkai to be able to help her, if he even still would.
Flexing her arm she leaned her head back as if staring up at the ceiling. Everything was slowly edging back towards hell. Wearily she climbed to her feet, half her attention on checking for the Pureblood visitor she sometimes had. If there as one thing she didn't want anyone to have seen it'd be her experimentation. How pitiful it'd been. That she'd done if in the first place.
It's centered around Eron, isn't it? Shukla had been silent and non-committal but she'd sensed amusement from Jean at the question, for some reason. She wasn't stupid as much as she came off that way. Dorjan had her and Ahn'akiir investigating Eron's past, she'd found holocrons that the Sith had wanted on his ship - the ship he protected fiercely - the safehouse on Taris that had ended up being as large as a secret base. The elaborate plots, the history - it smacked of a conspiracy to rival a holoflick.
Either they were all in a holoflick or there really was some Big Bad Secret Club happening right under her nose. Her nose twitched. She was hoping for the holoflick, personally.
Her arm still hurt but she leaned against the crate. Her first job for a Sith had been easy. Find their mcguffin, magically lost. The Lord had been white-lipped at delivery but she'd still been able to deliver - a step above the previous mercs that he'd apparently hired. Vycus had been... helpful.
Disquietingly accurate. The encounter with the Sith Miralukan had put a rattle to her cage, making her shore up her 'smuggler' and 'cargo transporter' personas with more trips to the dingiest cantinas she could find. Miralukans were rare in the Empire - a fact which the two had briefly discussed. She also knew that her bluff had been called the moment he'd studied her - but then again, so had his own. Affable - a predator seeking prey. Insightful - wary study.
But when her crate - the mcguffin - had been impounded by the Cartel's presence on Fleet he had stepped in with the authority she couldn't muster in her disguise and given her aid. For being 'more interesting than most of the people' present. With any luck she would be able to avoid running into the Sith again, chaulking the encounter up to her usual luck: bad, with a slice of dangerous. She wasn't certain being considered interesting by someone from the Sphere of Mysteries was a good thing.
Of course, as she was finding out, being an ally to someone from what seemed to be the Sphere of Defense wasn't all that was cracked up to be either. She hadn't yet asked where Venrirr's slice of profits was going to go but she doubted he'd needed the credits for his steak dinners. With a tap she fired off the contract. She should make sure he signed it. And then she pulled his own information up. She had two payments to send him now, with a third on the way.
Allies. She wanted to find Dimmy's name now, to put one more card into the proverbial deck she had in her games with him. She really should let Sriia muck in her head to fix the associations she had but Dimmy had become something of a ..... friend. In her mind at least. If Dimmy needed or asked for her help, would she give it to him?
Nearby Sparks slept. She hadn't been willing to use any blood but her own but the work had been messier than she remembered. She was as tired as ever though, wishing fleetingly for a duel to pull Force from an opponent. But the Sith had been written flawlessly and the Force twisted under her hands with few hiccups, closing her ears to the short screeches before Sparks had adjusted.
Now the acklay slept, her brief work to augment his natural affinity for using the Force strengthened. She'd have to work with him to see what it was she'd really managed but it was needed. She felt safer knowing she'd done something to help him, making him at least a smidge better. With a grimace she pulled Force around her wounded arm, slowly knitting the flesh and tissue back, replacing blood lost all while biting back a grunt of pain.
She just had to survive long enough for Akkai to be able to help her, if he even still would.
Flexing her arm she leaned her head back as if staring up at the ceiling. Everything was slowly edging back towards hell. Wearily she climbed to her feet, half her attention on checking for the Pureblood visitor she sometimes had. If there as one thing she didn't want anyone to have seen it'd be her experimentation. How pitiful it'd been. That she'd done if in the first place.
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