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...
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