Blackwater Ashes

[Kuzo]

Blackwater Reach​

Dosuun​

It had been months, almost a year. But the ruin of Blackwater Reach, the lands and title given to a dead woman remained untouched.

The rains had come, washing away much of the black ash into the mountain lake, but the scarred stone of the foundation and jutting timbers, black and crumbling around the edges, marred the landscape still. The fire had been fierce, consuming the house and gardens beside it in hours, too brilliant and hot for anyone to get near it.

Too great for anyone to have survived.

It had been reported as a tragedy of course. Baroness Irajah Ven had received a obituary in the Avalonia Holonews. But with no family to pass on the title or the lands to, they had waited, in silent repose.

A scar on the mountainside.

An accusation.

For those able to read it.

Doctor Irajah Ven had not died in the fire, no matter what the official channels had reported.

She had been murdered.

And she had not expected to return here, now. And yet there was something that brought her back. A moment, a turning point in the Force. She simply didn't know what it was yet.

[member="Connor Harrison"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

It wasn’t her fault, not really.

As much as he initially wanted to blame Doctor Irajah Ven, it wasn’t her fault.

Nor was it his. Although, he had promised to seek her out weeks later, following her ‘big moment’ to help with the virus – Gideon, was it? But even then, he had heard nothing to say it had gone well or not.

Connor hated to find out that no matter how it had gone, the Doctor had died by something totally unrelated. The reported death of Doctor Ven was, in galactic standards, old news now, but Connor had only just seen the repots while back on Dosuun. Safe to say it was a horrid way to go, and such a shame for someone who had tried to give so much good in the world but had invisible talons of pain always clawing her back from salvation. She had such a beautiful smile too even when she tried to be brave.

Standing at the foot of the incline that led to the once magnificent Blackwater Ranch, with that tranquil view over the lake and mountains, all he could see was black ash, scorched grass and burnt wood and steel. Even where he stood, yards from the ruins, loose debris crumbled beneath his boots and he gave one heavy sigh of regret.

He started up to the ranch, a slow walk around the gutted ruins of Irajah’s home to pay silent thanks for her help in being a friend when he needed one, and a wish she found some peace before the end. Rocks were kicked aimlessly, dry black grass crunched underfoot and the tiniest traces of personal belongings could be seen now and then amidst the soot and ash.

She wouldn’t be too impressed with, after all her hard work in treating him, he had lost the left arm altogether following his fall on Maena. That drew a wry smile at least as he walked around. The wind felt a little bitter today, and while the sun was out, there was little warmth. It was colder, and a little darker about the Ranch, and not just the weather.

Connor stood still, hands tucked between his three brown belts, and surveyed the scene.

”The fire. It didn’t kill you. The Dark Side did. Took hold of you, broke you and betrayed you,” he spoke through the wind.

His eyes focused like a hawk, and he turned instantly to the figure walking around the other side of the ruins, appearing between broken timber beams snapped in two. Of course Doctor Irajah Ven was alive. Of course this was the work of the Dark Side – deception and manipulation.

She didn’t look like the woman he left alone in her library nearly a year ago.

There was no Light radiating from her anymore. That made two of them.

[member="Irajah Ven"]

 

[Kuzo]

Dark hair, all the way down to the middle of her back now, rather than the short bob she had worn in that past life, moved with the cold wind. She was dressed sharply, clothing subdued but well cut and of high quality. Hands shoved deep into the pockets of her coat, though it hardly seemed as if the cold truly touched her. She radiated an almost offensively healthy glow- considering the last time he had seen her, pale, weak, in pain, this was an Irajah Ven as he had never seen her. Even at that first meeting, every movement, every breath had been pain. So much of her energy spooled up in controlling the virus Gideon. She stepped down from the scorched stone outcrop, every movement easy and relaxed.

Irajah tilted her head slightly, studying him. It wasn't what she had expected. It wasn't who she had expected. While they'd had a friendship in that previous life, it had not been a deeper connection. He had not been one of those who had felt when she had died- the cold slice of the knife across her throat, her life bleeding out beneath cold, young eyes. He had not felt her return, not sought her out. It was better that way. In a way, there was a certain appreciation for it. Those who had known her, who had experienced the ghost of that through her, had changed themselves. Not in large ways, not all of them anyway. But they way they responded to her after was altered, irrevocably. Some for the better. Some.....

Some less so.

She moved with a barely constrained energy. All of the life in her now casting the woman he'd known as a shadow. A simulacrum of what she had become. Yes, it had been through the Darkness, but she had come out more alive in a single breath than she had been in the entirety of the first year he had known her.

Her voice was calm, greeting an old friend.

"It was neither, in point of fact," she remarked when she got closer. "Neither the Fire nor the Darkness," she clarified. "The Darkside is the only reason I am alive at all, and I am grateful to it. No, Connor. I was murdered."

She stated it calmly, matter of factly.

"Hello Connor," she murmured, smiling softly. That at least, had not changed.

[member="Connor Harrison"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

It was good to see her again. And alive.

”Hello Doctor Ven.”

She stayed still, and so Connor moved to her. He walked with a nonchalant air about him, slowly kicking little chunks of black debris out the way, stepping over burnt rafters and twisted metal. His cowl grazed the soot beneath. The closer he got to her, the more he noticed how different she looked from last time. Last time, she had signs of physical and mental abuse, her hair was shorter and her frame a little more inward. Now it was the opposite with Irajah standing with confidence and very long hair and no evident signs of trauma that he could see from the outisde.

”Whoever murdered you didn't do a very good job, and I am glad they didn't. But, forgive me, I am rather behind in this. I assume what happened was covered up - ” his eye narrowed as a piece clicked together. ”Don't tell me this was the First Order's work.”

It was the First Order that brought them together in the first place a few years back. A scorned Jedi looking for a place, with a few war wounds to boot, and a good doctor making a decent life for herself and her adopted son willing to help a stranger and show him the way. Now, both had changed beyond where they had first met, and Irajah's story seemed so much more complex.

”Okay, you'll have to explain because this makes no sense. I take it the virus is gone, now? And...what happened to you? You look totally different. New, almost.”

Connor propped a foot on a chunk of steel and waited.

[member="Irajah Ven"]

 

[Kuzo]

He was different as well.

More put together. But then, each time she had seen him after their second meeting that had been the case. Her eyes coasted over to his arm, as if she knew somehow, but then came back to his face. Some things had not changed, however.

"If it helps I don't blame the First Order as a whole," she said, confirming his suspicion. "I don't believe they knew. And after the fire there was really no reason to investigate further."

He paused a few meters away still, and she was perfectly fine with that distance it seemed. It wasn't personal. But the lessons that had come with her last meeting with [member="The Slave"] had taught her well. She had come here because of a glimmer in the Force, a moment in time that fractured into a thousand spiderweb cracks. Somehow, that had to do with him. Connor. They had been friends before her death, but then, so had she and the Slave been. More there in truth. She didn't know what this moment led to, if it led to darkness and violence or something else. And until she did she was perfectly content to keep that slight distance.

Death had changed her.

Or perhaps, more accurate, the method of her death had.

"The Ren," she clarified, cocking her head to the side and watching him. "A young woman in particular. A young woman who had spent a year lying to me, and then grew so angry when I told truth that she cut my throat and tried to hide that crime by burning down my home around me."

She smiled, but the expression didn't quite reach her eyes. "She took my betrayal of the Zambranos to the Alliance and disinclination to join the Ren myself.... personally."

She shrugged.

"I have some very..... enterprising friends." A wry smile, but something haunted lurked for a moment behind those hazel eyes. "They had already prepared a body.... if I had been unable to find a cure for Gideon it was my back up. My last resort. It was lucky in a way. If I hadn't been fighting Gideon- and losing- we never would have made those precautions."

She paused, smile fading.

"I almost didn't make it out of the Nether," she said quietly. "I don't recommend it as a vacation spot, I can tell you."

It was all she would say about it, possibly ever. The sands scouring flesh down to the bone. The sharp stones of shrike mountain. What she had done.... what she had lost and given up. She had sacrificed a piece of her soul, gnawed off and left behind, like an animal in a trap.

It had been a small price to pay to life.

"And you? How has the last year treated you?"

As if this were the most ordinary conversation in the world.

[member="Connor Harrison"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

At the mention of the Ren, his eyes narrowed slightly. A young woman. In such power. He knew two, one of them must be the one responsible for this. While he didn't move as she spoke, his mind started joining dots.

Irajah Ven - First Order doctor and Force sensitive. Betrayal of the Zambrano family, linked to the Sith. In turn betrayed by the First Order and left for dead. Where did that leave her now? Solo? An underground Dark Side sect? The Sith Sorceress drifted into his mind - there was a feeling that she had something to do with this.

”I'll bear that in mind.”

The holiday advice and her information.

”The First Order don't deserve your attributes, nor do they mine. Where have I been? Apart from chasing shadows for the Ren themselves, bombing Skor and being made out to be responsible for their Moff executing dozens of their own as a lesson to be learnt, just the same old me.” He was always amused by the petty response to his actions. ”Sorry about the arm, I had a little trouble on Maena, but it was for the best.”

He moved his cybernetic arm for her to see; she did such a careful job of patching him up the first time. Connor shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

”I don't mean to pry, but if the First Order wanted you dead and you've betrayed a name akin to the Sith line, where do you stand now? Don't get me wrong, neither of those are the be all or end all for people like us, but you seemed to have everything in the Order you needed. Now without this place, and the fact you're dead but looking pretty good for it, what next for you?”

[member="Irajah Ven"]