A song of ice and fire

[NightSister]

"Okay then," Aria said slowly. Deccelerating particles to make ice, as she had accelerated to make fire. In theory, it made sense. In practice? That could prove a different story.

Her eyebrows knit together at Connor's last statement in a split-second sideways glance that was becoming more familiar, but she didn't get hung up over the prospect of freezing people alive and instead turned her focus to the water droplets in her hair and on her shoulder. With the fire, she had been creating the flames out of the air particles, which had given her a lot more to interact with in retrospect, but the point wasn't to get hung up over what was harder. Eyes half-closed, Aria magnified the water droplets in her mind, every atom within each drop suddenly becoming clear in her mind's eye. Now, slow down. Once again, Aria commanded the particles, this time willing each to drop its pace, moving slower and slower. Slow down.

Aria opened her eyes expecting to see a thin layer of ice beginning to coat the fabric on her shoulder and was tempted to roll her eyes at the now slightly colder damp patch that she was instead offered. Words such as pitiful came to mind, but Aria pushed the negative thoughts away. Voss wasn't built in a day.

[member="Connor Harrison"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

”You’re doing it again. Trying too hard. Trying to SEE what you want to happen. Don’t have a vision – just do it. Don’t make a barrier in your own mind. Like breathing, you don’t try to breathe and regulate it or vary the speed, you just do it. Because there’s no thought to it.”

He walked up the slight incline to her, talking a little louder of the waterfall behind them.

”I know you’re getting annoyed at me keep saying it, but the more you practice and understand it, the easier this will be. Like calling a hilt to your hand or opening a door, you don’t plan it out do you? You just do it – you connect with the Force and it happens. Same with this.”

Connor held his hand out, palm up.

”You’re not controlling the water remember. That’s a different aspect. You’re controlling the temperature; you’re manipulating it to freeze for you.”

A small wall of white snow and ice started to expand from nowhere above his palm, sparkling white and turquoise.

”Try again, because I know you’re stronger than you give yourself credit for. Way stronger.”

The ice pack dropped into his hand, and he crushed it, letting to drop to the ground to melt.

[member="Aria Vale"]

 

[NightSister]

"But that makes no sense!"

Aria hadn't meant to say that. She had been thinking it, but she hadn't meant to say it. Whoops.

But it was true - going from never having achieved a skill before to being able to simply do it wasn't a jump she could make, regardless of what Connor said. In a way, his faith in her abilities was worse than if he considered her incapable: there was simply no logical way to just do something that you'd never done before and have it work, as any proceeding attempts would doubtless demonstrate.

"Okay - never mind. I'll do it, but it won't work like you think it will." Aria sighed in resignation, half determined to prove him right and half to prove him wrong.

"Freeze, damn it," she said in an undertone, her eyes closed as she willed every thought out of her head except one, forming a connection to the water on her shoulder it was directed at: freeze. Nothing else, just the clear and concise command for the particles to slow and the temperature to drop until the water became ice. She could feel something tickling at her shoulder, and as she opened her eyes she could see a tiny sliver of white crystallizing. This felt so bossy. Was that Jedi-like?

That one distraction broke her concentration and the lone fractal became water again almost at once, cold seeping through the fabric again. Lovely.

[member="Connor Harrison"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

He picked up her frustration, and her streak of thinking beyond what Connor wanted her to. She certainly had fire, she just struggled to control it. With her short mouth and lack of patience, Connor saw a few glimmers of how he had been in the early days of the Silvers. That was either her curse or her gift.

”Right – forget it.” He held up his hand. ”If that’s your attitude, I’m not wasting my time. I have enough on than to barter with your ego, alright?”

He walked up beside her, side on.

”When you want to become better than you are, let me know. Until then, go find someone else who will submit to you and wrap you up in fluffy fur and make you take twice as long to do something you could do in an instant if you just tried harder.”

Holding her gaze for a moment, he knew she was valuable to have on side but she needed to let go of her own doubt.

”Lesson over.”

[member="Aria Vale"]

 

[NightSister]

Aria cringed as Connor reproached her frustration, cheeks colouring in embarrassment at failing to meet expectations. That she had lacked the grit to simply do things as Connor - whom, as Aria had evidently forgotten in pride at her own promotion, remained the Master and the one who had trained in the Force for many more years than she - had told her to do and instead made it difficult, was not something Aria commonly did. She had always been a respectful and for the most part devoted and quick-learning student; had her ego really altered her approach to learning so drastically? A Knight she may be, but Aria had certainly not acted like the Jedi she strived to be, and she was the only one to blame for that.

Shoulders sagging slightly in shame and defeat, Aria tried to decide what to do next. Such a situation was fiddly for somebody as incapable with people as herself; she wanted to continue the lesson but simultaneously had the intense desire to run away, lock herself in a dark room and wait until the ground swallowed her up.

Feth. Come on. What would Jedi Aria do?

Reluctantly, she spoke, in a tiny, timid voice.

"Does it help if I say I'm sorry?"

[member="Connor Harrison"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

With a slight pursing of the lips, Connor turned his head away.

”That's a word I've heard many times. A word I'm sick of hearing. You'll learn that too, one day. It's a shallow word people use when they have nothing else to offer in an otherwise demanding and tense situation. They don't offer anything except sorry.”

Looking back at her, he patted her upper arm and pointed to the temple.

”Go back there and find someone who will listen to you struggle, accept your apologies and wrap you up in wool.” Connor forced a little laugh, almost scornful. ”Lesson is over. And so is your time with me. I wish you well Aria.”

Nodding, Connor turned to walk up the incline to the temple grounds, the waterfall the only sound right now with it's unforgiving rage of water slamming into the rocks below. He rolled his sleeves up a bit more and scratched the back of his head, leaning his neck into the palm and exhaling.

[member="Aria Vale"]

 

[NightSister]

"What?"

Aria's head had been turned with embarrassment, but at his final statement her entire body whipped around, her face layered with surprise, confusion and hurt - and fear.

"You're not serious," she said with panic in her voice, this time afraid to even make the phrase a question. "You're not serious! Because of that, it's just over? Just because you've-" her voiced wobbled, threatening to crack - "because you've got a lot on?"

Her tone was rising dangerously fast; anger was having to work harder to cover up her fear. She owed everything to Connor; whether or not he insisted that it had all been her, whether or not he went on about how he was too flawed to be a role model, it wasn't and he wasn't - and what had happened the last time Aria had been lacking in somebody to guide her through the harder times? Perhaps with everything he had on, Aria thought bitterly, Connor had forgotten, but she had not and never would. It still visited her from time to time; in fleeting moments of upset, in dark and confusing dreams, in painful unending moments where the same awful cluster of seconds was played over and over, everything else blocked out indefinitely. Having thought over the preceding events, Aria had reasoned that she had been led to lose control for lack of true Jedi training; now the same was happening over, and even with everything that had happened since her fateful trip to see her parents Aria was genuinely terrified at the prospect of being left to her own devices.

"No. No. You know what? You told me that you were Connor and I was Aria and you were going to help me. Not that you were going to just boot me out the moment you get stressed and I'm not the perfect Apprentice that I'm supposed to be. D'you mean to say that you always took everything your Master said for granted, that you never got confused or frustrated or dared to ask a question? Go ahead, say it; I won't believe you, and I don't believe you. I don't believe you!"

Now Aria was especially glad that they were by a waterfall and not inside, that she could yell as Connor turned to walk away and nobody would hear her.

"Don't you dare leave now!" she almost screeched, anger bubbling up ferociously where there had been none just minutes ago. "You come back here and tell me what the hell you're thinking, Connor Harrison!"

[member="Connor Harrison"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

Connor heard her just fine – he heard her Force aura spike, and felt that raw drive for greatness in her which was becoming smothered within the Silver Jedi walls. She pushed him, and certainly found betters words to say than “sorry”.

Yes he acted like a stubborn idiot, and a flippant teacher, but Connor acted how he wanted for a reason. Those who couldn’t see were blind to his needs, and right now he needed ones like Aria Vale to see beyond what was in front of them.

He turned, face set like someone ready to go 10 rounds with a Wampa.

”I am my OWN Master! I always have been. I just follow these…rules and codes to suit the hierarchy of what the Jedi has become. Nobody tells me my limits anymore. As for you,” he pointed to her, equally face set, ”you’re still trying to be something you’re not. Who are you trying to impress? Yourself? Them?”

Connor stood and looked down at her from his high-ground of the incline, framed by the waterfall.

”The Force brought you to me to become more than a Shadow – the Shadows are inept and still don’t act as they should. You can be more than a Shadow, Aria. Use that rage inside you – why hold it back? I don’t want to teach a girl holiding herself back – letting the Jedi hold her back. That rage. That desire. That power. Use it.”

He rubbed his hands together and pulled them apart to draw a lie of fire from the heat particles he created, and pushed them out to her.

”USE IT!”

[member="Aria Vale"]

 

[NightSister]

All of a sudden, everything shifted, and Connor transformed, almost literally, before her eyes, from moody and resigned into something Aria had never seen before. All of a sudden, the same man that Aria knew as a Master of the Silver Jedi was shouting at her with something a lot like murder in his eyes; all of a sudden, Aria had no idea who he was anymore. He still looked like Connor, he still spoke like Connor, but he was something else entirely, and seeing everything Aria had thought was his true person disappear to make way for something that was behaving exactly like a Sith tore into Aria like a knife twisting in flesh.

A roaring row of flames flew towards her as the salt in the wound; it was a nightmare, only real - so unbelievably, awfully real.

"Damn it, Connor, what are you doing?" Aria had only a fraction of a second to create a shield; the adrenaline spike fuelled her strength just enough to power the barrier, and most of the fire stopped just inches before it reached her, though a few rogue flames dodged the shield and whizzed narrowly past her head. Aria didn't dare look to see what they had set on fire instead. The flames that her shield had stopped she rapidly controlled as her own, bringing them together into a fireball and sending it spinning towards the waterfall just as she had done mere minutes ago.

"What's gotten into you?" she screamed back at him, more out of panic than anger. "Using rage? Do you even hear yourself? I'm not a Sith, Connor, and neither are you! You're not a Sith, and you're not a Dark Jedi, and you're not whatever this mood swing on steroids is making you into. I don't care how or why the Order's pissed you off; this isn't you! And if it is, then change, Connor, because if you don't then I swear on the Force, I will die fighting you."

And it was true. Oh, it was true.

[member="Connor Harrison"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

Either without thinking, or trying, or even knowing, Aria acted and defended herself against a violent attack. It could have been a lot worse had she failed, but Connor was brutal and blunt in methods. If she wasn't worthy and if she couldn't prove his faith in her, then she wasn't worth the time.

”Right now I am not Jedi nor Sith,” he said, walking down slowly to her. ”I am Connor Harrison. Plain and simple. And you, Aria Vale, should come with me when the Order crumbles around us. There are dark forces at work, some in plain sight, and we are not getting anything done staying here in shackles.”

He was closer to her now. Breathing out, he wiped his hand over his beard and let the roar of the waterfall fill the silence between the pair.

Then, suddenly, he turned, hand curled for her throat and began to squeeze her windpipe.

”There is darkness inside you Aria,” he said calmly, the monster inside awakening, ”and you need to feed it so it doesn't die along with you in the shadow of the Light.”

Connor looked at her, pleading with his eyes as her body slightly rose up ever so gently.

”Be the warrior you've always wanted to be. Come on.”

[member="Aria Vale"]

 

[NightSister]

What was he playing at? Not one hour ago, Aria had been grinning as Connor praised her for her Knighthood: now Aria was backing up out of sheer terror simply as he took a step towards her. He had once told her that he was too dangerous to be looked up to; Aria had dismissed it as an example of his self-deprecating and slightly dark way of depicting everything, that he was speaking simply of the great degree of skill that he, being a Master, automatically had.

She wasn't dismissing anything now.

Fear was cutting off her conscious stream of thought: the only thing she could properly focus on was his words, even as she looked on in growing horror whilst Connor Harrison became less and less recognisable. She had always, always put faith in him: even now, she still wanted to believe that Connor was simply having a bad day, perhaps had decided to leave his sanity at the door when he left the Temple. It was so much easier than allowing the Connor Harrison that was a Jedi and the Connor Harrison that was not to merge in her head, become one.

Then his hand reached out and she could barely let out a gasp as her throat was caught in an iron grip. Shock and emotional hurt slowed down her usually lightning-fast reflexes; where in any other fight Aria wouldn't even have allowed her neck to be reached before knocking her opponent down, she had seized up in panic and submitted to his attack without so much as a struggle. Now the infinite number of defenses against the move had fled from her mind, and Aria was losing air fast as Connor looked on at her with unsettling calm.

He expected her to be able to defend.

And Aria trusted his judgement, always.

With a strangled scream of anguish, Aria's arm shot out in a rapid jab at Connor's abdomen: while he defended accordingly, her other hand sent every ounce of power she had left in her towards him, pushing him as far away from her as she could.

"No," Aria whispered, her voice hoarse and croaky from having taking her time freeing herself. "No, no, no no no, Connor, what are you doing? The Order isn't crumbling, and you're not going anywhere. I don't want to fight you, okay? Just be normal again...please." She no longer had the strength to screech in anger; she lacked even the strength to howl in manic fear. Just as suddenly as it had come, all her rage and urge to fight had left her - though she would stay true to her oath if he didn't relent, all she wanted was for everything to go back to how it had been. It was all she could do to choke out her words as she kept backing up from Connor with an arm out in defense and eyes that stung as though tears were just waiting for a chance to fall.

[member="Connor Harrison"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

Connor pulled her close, batting away her feeble striking hand, and scuffed her boots across the floor.

”This IS normal,” he said.

And with that, he let go of her, hearing the gasp she took to pull in the fresh air and open her windpipe up. With that, he licked his lip and exhaled, closing his hand into a fist and flexing it a few times.

Looking up to the temple, he took a few moments and walked around her.

”You can’t trust anyone anymore, Aria. Not even me.” He crouched down and placed a hand on either shoulder. ”You have to become stronger. You have to fight harder, because I could have killed you there and then. But I need you. Ok?”

He shook her gently and pulled her up with support on her arm. Chipping away at her security and her trust was part of the healing process. Part of the empowerment.

”It is time to let go of the line that blurs light and dark and let them become one. It’s the way that people ascend into greatness, and how people like us take what we want how we want it. You said before that your lover, you would do anything to protect her, right? Where is she now? She’s not here for you. She lied to you. Where am I? I am here. Right where I said I would be for you. Let me help you, and maybe then we can discover some real truth about the Force and the power it holds out there for ourselves.” He looked back to the temple. ”Away from those who hold us back.”

With his growing network of contact outside of the Jedi, Connor was finding himself in a stronger, but unsecure, position. He just needed the ones to stand by him when the time came.

[member="Aria Vale"]

 

[NightSister]

Aria gasped for breath, cursing her futility in trying to push him away. What was his point? What was he trying to achieve? And what did he still want with her, who seized up with panic at the first emotional hurdle to the point where she couldn't hardly defend herself?

As he let go of her then turned to face her again, she held eye contact with him, refusing to look away: drained though she was, but Aria still had it in her to show one tiny flicker of strength, of defiance. Her body tensed at his touch and her jaw clenched, but she didn't move backwards. A part of her was still trying to show, to him or to herself, that she wasn't so liable to cowardice; a part simply didn't have the fight left to resist; another part just wanted something that felt even a little bit like how everything had been when Connor had been normal...or whatever it was he wanted to call it, if he insisted that the violent and angry Connor was his normal self.

"Do you?" Her tone was flat and lifeless, as though even her words had lost the will, but she had to say them; she had to be heard. "I'm not strong enough. I can't help you with whatever crazy scheme you've got planned - and I won't, either. Why not just kill me and find somebody who'll be of use to you?"

Then she regretted that too - it seemed today was her day for tripping herself up with her words. Would her reminder of her own uselessness be enough for him to take her up on it? Though Aria felt as though the answer was no, she couldn't be certain anymore. She had thought Connor was a Jedi, more or less; look how that worked out.

"Help me?" That set her off: Aria's eyes blazed, her voice full of mocking disbelief. "Connor, I don't know what it is you think you're doing, but this -" she gave a dry laugh as she gestured vaguely, "-this isn't you helping me! Have you stopped, for ONE MOMENT since you turned into some anti-Jedi, to actually think about me? I came to you to be a Jedi. I don't care what the Force thinks or how great I could be as whatever you're trying to make me, so don't you dare try and pretend that that's what you're doing here. What you're doing is - no, actually, you know what: you tell me. What are you doing, Connor?"

[member="Connor Harrison"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

With a stern face, Connor looked down at Aria and listened. He didn't laugh, or frown, or try to interrupt, but he just listened. Listened to her sharp words and read into her spiking aura, noting her body language and cracks in her voice. Cracks in the voice spread out to the mind and heart soon enough.

”Aria, this may seem too much for you to contemplate right now, but soon you will see the error in your ways, and the mistake you have made. If you don't care about the Force, you are not fit to be in my company or that what you claim to be. Jedi.”

He glanced up to the waterfall and looked at it, letting it calm him when the noise drowned out the tension in the air.

”I've seen more horror and experienced more pain than you have and probably ever will. The time of the Jedi Knights are numbered in these times, and I have seen it from the day I set foot on Voss a decade ago. I am doing what I should have done before. Be me. Not the Jedi everyone expects. But me. Connor Harrison; warrior, defender and guardian of the Force. Not of a code or a people, but the Force. The Jedi and Sith are destroying it with their wars, and when I have chances to remove the cancer that rots out galaxy, the chains of the Order pull me back. I bend to their whim, and I forsake my true calling because of it, but no more. Not now.”

As cool as anything, Connor looked at his apprentice, and the steely gaze confirmed her strength was buried under mounds of broken promises, hurt and confusion.

”Charzon Loulan is dead. I killed her on Korriban and left her body for the Sith to do as they wish. Now only two people know this - you and I. Should word reach Thurion or Coci, who knows what will happen, but I will know you think that little of me to betray my trust after what I've done for you.” He stepped forward and held his hand out. ”What am I doing? I am making things RIGHT once more. I willl do things others are too scared to do, and I will learn more than anyone has learnt with their restrictions blinding them. I will become a beacon of hope for those like us who are trapped by code and convention. Now is the time to break free, Aria.” His hand withdrew again. ”And I want you to break free with me, either now, or tomorrow, or in the weeks that follow. If you trust me, if you look into the Force, you know I am not going to hurt or hold you back as the Jedi are doing right now. As the Silver Council are doing.”

[member="Aria Vale"]

 

[NightSister]

Aria listened in spite of herself, her eyes holding a tangled mix of emotion at his words - part aggravated, part horrified, and part so, so confused.

"Don't you put words in my mouth." She narrowed her eyes. "Of course I damn well care about the Force, but I'm not going to decide my future based on what an abstract entity might or might not be trying to tell me. And don't you dare speak to me like I'm a child."

At that point, despite everything, her anger was clear; nothing like Connor's explosion from moments before, but evident nonetheless - in her voice, in the way she held herself, in the scathing look she threw his way. She was angry, how could she not be? She felt deceived: when she had been sure Connor had been one person, out of nowhere he had become another. Or had it really been out of nowhere? Aria had grown accustomed to his occasional un-Jedi-like tendencies, she had perfected her looks of suspicion to become almost imperceptible. Like she had written everything else off as not being cause for concern, Aria ignored it as nothing more than flickers of whatever his past held. Maybe in her determination for Connor to remain who he was in her mind, Aria had become completely blind to his descent from the Light; maybe this really was him being who he normally was; and that terrified her.

Then it got worse: Connor had killed Charzon Loulan. The shock barely even registered in her face; by this point it almost made more sense than the alternative. Not that it made the revelation any better. The same thought had occurred to Aria, the fleeting thought in the midst of the trial that nothing could possibly be improved by letting her live, that she herself could do the deed and feel she was doing a service to the galaxy - but it had been just that, a faraway notion inspired by her bad mood with the murderer on trial, never something she would have done if in her right mind. However, Aria didn't have it in her to scream 'murderer' at Connor, nor could she find it in herself to tell the Jedi council. Connor's secret was safe with her, and she was certain he knew it - but she still couldn't bring herself to hate him for it.

"Trust you?" Aria's voice rose again as she looked at him, utterly perplexed. "How am I supposed to trust you? You're talking exactly like the people I've been literally trained to fear. You tried to kill me. Twice. You did kill that Charzon woman. And now I'm meant -" her voice cracked; her pitch got higher and she had to force the words out -"to trust you?"

She sighed, trying to calm herself down, still holding his gaze. "You know, somehow I still do. But it's not enough. I'm not going anywhere."

[member="Connor Harrison"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

Another crack in her voice. Another crack in her soul.

Connor sighed and nodded.

”Trust is a word as fleeting as the sorry. So, for what I did, I am sorry. Take that as you wish.”

He gently took her arm to lead her down to the large clearing beneath the waterfall, where had had spent many hours training Younglings, meditating and simply watching the giant force of nature and feeling totally insignificant below it; as if the waterfall were a conduit for the Force, and little Connor Harrison was a speck below it of flesh and blood and bone; insignificant.

”I wasn’t trying to kill you, I was trying to make you stronger and more dependant on your own inner belief than you think. If I was going to kill you, you’d be a corpse by now. I’ve spent all this time teaching you to trust yourself and listen to yourself, but you’re still listening to everything and everyone around you. You’re even listening to me more than yourself, but at least you’re challenging me – which means you’re scared, which means you’re afraid, which means you simply don’t understand what I am saying.”

Connor let go of her and stood in front of her, and if one concentrated, they would feel a light haze of water in the air coming from the large rocks where the waterfall crashed down into the surface of their world.

”By killing Charzon, I have effectively taken away the shine from both the Mandalorians and the Sith, and already her crime is a memory. There has been no attempt to seek her out, to attack a Jedi prison to free her, or anything like that because I did what had to be done for the greater good. At the expense of the morality of the Jedi; I did what nobody else could do partly due to their cowardice and partly due to the fact they don’t understand the danger that is coming.”

A dry throat swallowed, and he began to see that he was already turning away from them. After a decade or so, he had started to speak ill of the Order he had grown in, and the tendrils of the darkness experienced recently were taking hold. But, still, he was in control and not fighting the admission of where his view lay. His blue eyes flicked to her, and then up, and then down. As if trying to make sense of it.

”I won’t be here for long, Aria. That much is clear when events come out. It is time to take the fight to those out there standing in our way, and using the ability and power we have to forge our OWN connections, our own conventions and our own way of using the Force. I want you with me when I do. But that choice is yours and yours alone. Should you not, you won’t hear from me again unless you come up against me.”

He took her hand in his right, and covered it with his left, before drawing the moisture from her palm and freezing it to form a prism of ice that she now held.

”There’s more to things than just what you see on the surface, my young Apprentice. You just have to find the strength inside to look beyond and find what is inside.”

[member="Aria Vale"]

 

[NightSister]

Aria listened to his apology with no empathy or understanding in her face - something in how she held herself shifted ever so slightly, but she gave no other sign that she had heard or cared. She had no words to offer back.

Following with some reluctance as Connor led her to a clearing, Aria didn't even bother with a sweeping glance of the area before turning to face him again. Earlier, it would've occurred to her that in all her time on Voss, she'd never seen the clearing before, but she had other things on her mind now to say the least.

"Weren't you?" she asked, eyebrows raised: her bitter and sardonic tone held no trace of sincerity. "So if I hadn't been able to do anything against you - you'd have just left it? What, you had the fire on safety mode or something?"

She wouldn't accept his twisted justifications: punishing failure with death was a Sith method. Had the entire thing ensued before Connor had lost his temper with her and started preaching to feed her darkness, Aria might even have gone along with it being just another of his more extreme methods of trial. Those were hardly unusual, after all. As it was, attempted murder seemed a better fit.

"Stop trying to read me." Aria glared. The word trying was entirely redundant: Connor had read her emotions faster and with more precision than Aria read actual books. She was a good reader, too.

Then his offer. Aria's aggravated look changed, again, to one of pain. Despite how fragile she was, despite how useless she'd really be to him in the big picture, Connor wanted her with him. A stronger person would have laughed and told him to go to hell. Aria didn't feel like a strong person; she didn't even feel like a good Jedi at this point. She hated herself for even toying with the notion of saying yes - the idea was more tempting than Aria would have realised, more so than she was even willing to consciously admit.

But she had made a promise. And it wasn't to Connor Harrison.

"You know what, Connor?" Her voice was tired, heavy, resigned; she had given up. "Go. Remove the cancer that rots the galaxy. I don't care. I wish you luck. But you do anything, anything at all, that puts the Order in danger, and I don't care if you have to kill me, I will do whatever it takes to stop you."

Aria pulled her hand back, dropping the little ice structure. It hit the ground and shattered into pieces.

[member="Connor Harrison"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

His head went down as he looked at the shattered prism, already melting into the ground between them.

Maybe it was going to prevent her suffering in future, since everyone Connor Harrison came in contact with either succumbed to darkness or the end of a blade. Aria was different, however. She had more spirit and fight than anyone else he'd taught in his time with the Order.

”Order. I AM this Order,” he said before looking at her.

Walking past, he stopped by her side and touched her mind's eye, twisting a vision in her head of herself standing atop a burning mass of rubble as others submitted before her on their knees.

”And how can someone kill their opponent, when they know the opponent is stronger than any they've faced before?”

Connor walked away to the incline. He wasn't going to beg or preach. The time was coming, and he wasn't going to drown as they got pulled under. Maybe he would do wonders for them all when they looked back in years and saw the results he made when others cast him aside. Looking up the sky, he pushed his tongue under his teeth in frustration. He wasn't here to hurt her, but he wasn't going to lose his best asseet and greatest student to become something he had; a failure that had lived a closed, sheltered life.

”My quarters are open for you, Aria. Don't leave it too late and have this as the last mistake you'll ever make.”

He rubbed his hands together, looking at the palms as he walked away up the incline, the waterfall raging endlessly.

[member="Aria Vale"]

 

[NightSister]

Clueless as to how she even felt anymore, Aria looked at him imploringly. Everything he said, everything he did, created fifty more questions in her mind, and she no longer had the energy or even the desire to voice even one of them - instead, all her confusion hung in the air, practically tangible as she stared him down.

Then she felt an intrusion into her mind; words and pictures were pulled and prodded into shape, and Aria gritted her teeth at the result. Was this what Connor saw when he talked about breaking free? Was this what he envisioned as he declared he would make things right again? Was this how he was to become a beacon of hope? Aria was repulsed, but still she kept her mouth closed. What would she even say?

She saw him turn out of the corner of her eye, and Aria blinked back into full awareness to see him slowly moving away. Good. Or bad? What had she expected, what had she wanted? Question after question; but never answers. She wanted answers. She wanted things to make sense.
At his final words, Aria threw her head back in confusion. The last mistake - was that a threat? She didn't feel threatened. She felt hollow and numb. As far as she was concerned, Connor was gone; her Master, her guide, her ally, maybe even her friend.

All gone.

Aria wheeled around, opening her mouth; a million sentences were at the tip of her tongue, but nothing came out. She collapsed against a boulder and let out a noise that came somewhere between a laugh and a sob - what now? It was still morning; she'd been given a vague deadline to change her mind, but would she?
It would be so easy. Less than five minutes to reach his quarters, a single sentence - even just a nod - to say she was coming with him, and then all the stress, all the codes and rules, would be gone. She could remain training under Connor; she could fight alongside him and become as powerful as him. The words painted a pretty picture, but what of the negatives? She enjoyed being a Jedi. She had a small number of friends among the Order, she felt a part of something - and of course, her promise, which she had not forgotten for a moment since her parents died.

It all came together after a time, so much so that Aria was quite pleased with it: she stayed. She completed her promise and became a Jedi Master. By the time she had reached the rank, she would have achieved, once again, the sense of belonging and of peace, and wouldn't want to leave. She would become a Master without Connor, and she would be better off for having done it without him, and if he threatened the Order she would be strong enough to take him down.

But it would have been so easy...

[member="Connor Harrison"]