Private C'est comme ça

[Vesta]

How Have You Been?​

MONUMENT MORI​

AVADICH​

The dune-covered world of Avadich hadn't been chosen for strategy, nor had it been picked for any sort of relative importance or cultural significance like her peers might like to believe, rather when Darth Solipsis had given her the choice of where to lay the foundations of her new home she had decided on a place of isolation and an association with the looming existential dread that their war along the stars brought to its harsh sands. There were the mandatory Mawite men and women present for the woman's keep to function, but they were meant to never been seen or heard when their mistress wasn't abroad. Silence reigned supreme here, the poignant quiet the only music that the dreaded nihilist preferred now, with only the occasional fits of rage and shattered duracrete statues to puncture the stagnant heat. The girl's apprentice appeared on occasion, brief interludes that provided the castle staff with relief from the emotional tantrums their master engaged in when she was alone, but, just as the planet's solar eclipse was primed to begin in the next several minutes, the stars had aligned for every single distraction to be absent at the same time.

The soft, subdued, sounds of her bare feet colliding with the smooth floor echoed through the halls as the castle's namesake strode out and into the central halls. Dressed lightly in silken, loose, garments, her expression contrasted heavily with the attire that seemed almost to hang from her - fiery anger blazing behind amber eyes and clear irritation spread across the features of her face. At the base of the staircase, in the heart of the well of the fortress, there was a servant standing anxiously in wait for their master in direct contradiction to the strict demands she had made to spend the rest of her time here alone. They weren't alone but the Sith hadn't paid the visitor that stood by the large doors any attention just yet, her guard as far dropped as it could given the circumstances. "I decided to spare the girl that disturbed my rest, there had better be a very good reason to violate my clear request to be left alone or you'll be given punishment for two." She said, her hands finding their place at the tops of her hips after she reached the man.

"I- I apologize, Mistress, but a visitor claims th-that you'd be understanding and.. and.. that we'd best not deal with them like we normally would or you'd be much less forgiving!"

Her eyes narrowed immediately at his explanation, unaware of anyone that she could possibly be expecting who wouldn't have been let through by her servants. She kept her gaze locked onto his face as she started to pivot towards the door, lips pressed thin before she spoke. "And who would this --" Vesta started, voice full of annoyance, but lost the words as she finally shifted her gaze toward the unexpected visitor and softened immediately. "Never mind. Go back to.. whatever it was you were doing. I'll see to my guest." She said with a rather extreme tonal shift, uncertainty as evident in her voice as the confusion that had replaced the irritation present on her face. The man didn't need to be told twice and hastily made off towards the hall opposite from the one she'd came from. She blinked, once and then twice, before appearing to come to terms with what she was seeing. "I.. wasn't expecting you." Vesta said simply. In truth she hadn't figured she would ever see the woman again, aside than perhaps by chance, after their last talk.

" Quinn Varanin , how have you been?"

 

[Quinn Varanin]

//: Darth Mori //:

Insanity. Every action that led her to this moment was pure insanity. Over and over again, she found herself reaching out, forcing herself to forget the signs of why the Force desired them to be apart. Could love be confused with insanity? Quinn thought quietly as she followed the man who had crossed her path upon her arrival. Was her love an obsession, an insane obsession that had no end? She wrinkled her nose at the thought. How could a woman of her pedigree be obsessed? She was nothing of the sort; she knew what she wanted and where her heart led.

Or was she insane?

Quinn continued wrestling with her thoughts as she half-listened to the conversation between Master and servant. The sound of Vesta's voice penetrated her mind causing the servant's voice to muddle. Amber eyes watched as the woman's body language changed, shifting the moment their eyes locked. Did that always happen, or was this a new reaction? Quinn suddenly felt more exposed than she ever had been in front of her former paramour. Silence fell between them as the huntress moved onto the Princess.

"How have you been?" A simple question, but the Echani could feel her heart caught in her throat. Simple questions weren't what they did. Passion and obsession are what drove them towards each other. Her passion threatened to choke her where she stood, but the calm exterior of the Echani never cracked.

Fingers brushed aside the blond hair that shaped the woman's face as she let her lips curl into a smile. Despite their arrangement, Quinn felt particular happiness when she saw Vesta. To be in the same room as the woman was nearly enough for the Princess to feel whole again. "Better now," she responded - her words betraying her. "I know you don't want to hear it, but I have missed you." Quinn stepped closer, eyes never leaving Vesta's as she spoke. "You seem well, are you? Has the path you've chosen been everything you dreamed of?"

 

[Vesta]

1121​

She felt a chill go down her spine, her ears twitch back, as Quinn Varanin speared straight into the heart of her thoughts, leaving the Sith feeling skewered on the spot. This was the sort of emotional blackmail that she tolerated the least, the kind that invited regret for ever having made the decisions she had which invited these saboteurs close enough to uncover the vulnerability that those words struck at. She was supposed to be the cruel one, the villain, and though that was true it felt purposeless when faced with such a cutting curiosity. "..I missed you, too." She mumbled, taken aback by the brazen question, while her gaze fell and her expression became slightly more muted. She felt, even if for a moment, like an idiot - excited over something that immediately turned to probing questions that sounded quite a lot like mocking.

She sighed, holding her eyes shut tight for a moment or two while she tried to find the words that wouldn't make a fool out of herself. "If you were hoping I would change my mind, Quinn, then I'm sorry," Vesta said as she turned her head towards the stairwell at the heart of the room, "I won't." She added when her gaze returned to the princess. Her left hand, still very much a foreign part of her new body despite the methods of its creation, found itself resting against the base of the same side of her face with the tilting of her head and the questioning look that followed. "Yeah, well, looks can be deceiving, I'm sure." She continued carefully, her eyes narrowing by a hair's breadth to match the scrutiny of her words. She took a step backwards, finally finding the inner strength to do so, and let her hand fall to cling to her hip, and blinked several times with a downward turn of her head to bring her eyes in line with the floor.

"It was nice to see you again.."

Her voice trailed off as she started to turn, her cheeks beginning to color, before it returned far more subdued.​

"But if you came just to make me feel bad then you can go. I'm not playing these games."​

'This hurts enough.'​

They had this fight already, she failed to find her footing then and certainly didn't have it now. What use was there in letting her pick at the weakest part of her if it wouldn't amount to anything except less comfort in solitude? "No, I don't think this is anywhere close to what I wanted it to be, and it never will be, but neither will doing whatever you ask me to do to make you happy be, either." She lashed out with a sudden burst of emotion, still keeping herself turned away and facing the long hall she had came from in the first place. "Everything is a mess and what I need to do to make things right is more than anyone has any right in asking from me."

"Is that what you wanted to hear, the truth?" She asked, pivoting back to face her.

There were blotches of color, of pinks and reds, and there were several streaks of moisture that must have been tears, but more than that she was upset.

"Why did you even bother coming here in the first place? Remind me what kind of a loser I am, or how I should've done a better job of getting free or bothered to find you sooner? Save it - I don't need you to make me question everything I do."

"I do that enough on my own."

 

[Quinn Varanin]

//: Darth Mori //:

Quinn felt the tension in her muscles relax, hearing words that she had wanted to hear for some time. There were always brief moments between them that Vesta returned to the girl she had fallen for that dark evening. Even with them both missing the other, space remained to keep them apart. Was that how it was always going to be? Forever orbiting each other, only having memories to keep them sane? Before Quinn could respond, Vesta shifted. She became defensive, and the Echani stepped back, realizing how her words had come off.

"No, that's-" Quinn stopped, cut off as the woman continued to speak. She had let slip her own guilt, and in turn, it soured the mood. Amber eyes stared at the hand, its sight causing the Echani's face to crack - concern etched into her features. She wanted to move towards her, comfortable and warm like so many times before now - but she hesitated. Everything that she had thought of to say was ruined because she couldn't just stick to her rehearsed script. It was perfect, and Vesta wouldn't be so upset.

Vesta moved to leave her once more, and before Quinn could object - Vesta's attention returned to her. Each word cut like a knife into the Echani Princess. Deeper than she had expected it to. Had she made a grave mistake in coming here? Was her presence that painful for the Sith? She held fast where she stood, fingers collapsed tightly against the locket, hoping to find some strength within its metals. "No, I would never do that." her words soft, hinting at the joint pain. Eyes once more lingering on the woman's hand, then back to her reddening face. "I came because I wanted to see you; like I said, I missed you, and I wanted to know how you were doing."

Quinn stepped towards Vesta slowly, knowing the woman wouldn't take the necessary steps to close the gap between them. She needed to be closer, "I didn't come to mock you or to try and change your mind. You were right; it wasn't right of me to ask you what I asked you." Quinn stopped and smiled softly to the woman, "I just-" She sighed, feeling defeated already. "I just wanted to see you, wanted to know that you're doing well and that my fears were foolish. I'm not here to hurt you or to remind you of terrible things. I just wanted to see you," Quinn stopped herself; she did know how far she could press - how honest she could be. Especially after their last interaction, she needed to tread carefully.

It hurt knowing that she couldn't tell Vesta at this moment - how much she wanted her just for her - no matter what she wanted.

 

[Vesta]

flowers

With time all things come to an end, but it isn't the end that is so wretched, so difficult to bear; it's the process of aging, of the distance that grows between two stellar bodies - strung so far from each other that the only thing which remains is the imprint they left in ages past. Like light traveling from the far flung reaches of the galaxy to a planet on the opposite side; the light could be pleasant, desirable, a memory of something that was once warm, inviting, the sort of ideality that brought the ones to see it to strive to explore the vast reaches to find it.

Only to discover that flame was long extinguished, the light long dead.

That hopeful image, that echo of a time long gone, was what love had become in her mind. The spark that ignited that passion had been very real, it had to be to project that memory she held onto for so long, but what had grown in the absence of their mutual care for it was the cold, empty, space that stretched on forever like the fabric of reality in which the stars themselves were embedded in. Search, search, endlessly and forever, for that tiny light that had promised them a future together didn't bring them any closer to each other than the moment they had left the reach of the other. Like the stars birthed at the creation of the spiraling arms of the galaxy, the fire that had burned so brightly it once illuminated their way through the path they had ventured on together was already gone even as they set out to find it again.

What was once obvious compassion, a language as difficult to comprehend as the words of love itself, now so easily twisted with an absence of fundamental trust. "It isn't the terrible things." She said after the long pause that followed Quinn Varanin . No, she could stand the anger that had been lobbed her way despite the degree it bothered her, for instance, on Rhand. "I think of the good times, the early times." She explained, though she understood intimately how that might sound - she had thought those words over and over in her head, tried to comprehend why she never looked back towards then. It wasn't like her to dwell on anything so nonspecific, so imprecise, she wasn't that thoughtless as to generalize. Yes, she was upset now - but the reassurance had reminded her the difference between them that she had forgotten. Purposeful, philosophic even, Vesta had always looked so closely at the very threads she tugged on even as she lived and breathed to find the deeper meaning of it all - to find what she she had been meant to do.

Something as simple as an innocent question, to someone so cautious, could mean much more than the sum of their words. A thousand thoughts and more had rained through her mind when she listened to Quinn, many of which were in conflict with each other, some were needs and others wants - others, still, assumptions both passionate and not. "I don't want to want what I can't have." She said simply. It was the most concise manner in which she could have phrased the ridiculously overcomplicated maelstrom of feelings that churned within her, or perhaps the only way she knew how to put into words. "But I don't want to.. stop.. wanting you."

"Wh- No. You.. already explained that." She said with a sigh.

It was a question she always had, one that always had the same answer - still she had asked herself, and nearly Quinn, now, for a second time. It was perhaps an unfair one, a selfish one, but it was certainly not to the correct question, the one that lingered at the center of her heart. It was silent, there, obfuscated, sometimes, even from herself. This rare pairing of introspection with conversation between the two of them, however, brought that question bubbling to the surface, both unwanted and feared. Far less fair than the one she'd demanded an answer to before - the ramifications of wondering it brought much of her decisions into question. Keeping it suppressed, for now at least, she veered her mind away from it and towards something far less existential.

"Sorry, I'm under a lot of pressure. I misunderstood and.. didn't trust you."

 

[Quinn Varanin]

//: Darth Mori //:

"It's okay, Vesta." Quinn smiled gently, still keeping her distance from the Sith, unsure if she could step closer despite wanting to. She didn't want to overstep her boundaries again. Vesta had placed high walls between them, but they were all to protect her from Quinn and what the Echani represented. It hurt more than it probably should, but Quinn understood the conflicting feelings. She knew they were over, but the want and desire were still there. If only she couldn't feel the emotional conflict brewing in the Shi'ido, then maybe she could bury her suffering.

Every word from her lips made Quinn's heart flutter. Vesta still thought fondly of her, remembering times that felt so long ago. They were the same memories the Echani held close to her heart, never wanting to forget, never wanting to let go of how they made her feel. Quinn moved closer, her feet moving without command, drawing closer to where she wanted to be. She was like a moth to a flame, not caring that if she touched it - it could possibly burn her. No, she never wanted to be far from Vesta. Her world still revolved around her.

"You don't have to," Quinn reached out, searching for something to touch. "Why can't you have what you want?" She questioned, only remembering the ultimatum she had given not too long ago. "I was wrong, it's-" She started and stopped; Quinn knew the path that this led to, and she didn't want to talk in circles again. She knew why she came and what she came for; being honest was all she could be with Vesta. "I don't want to stop wanting you either - I can't stop wanting you." She felt flush; Quinn hated this vulnerability. It was a weakness that Vesta could exploit if she desired to, but - Quinn knew she was safe.

Quinn shook her head and pulled her hand back; she couldn't force her touch onto the woman - especially when she had made it so clear back then. Quinn wanted Vesta to reach back and not have this conflict of wanting something she shouldn't have. But maybe that's what made the other so enticing. To want something you could not have only made obtaining it sweeter.

"What's happening?" She questioned only to somewhat change the subject, focus it on something else besides her undying desire for the Sith. "Is there something that I could do to help you relax?" Quinn tried to word it as casual as possible, but she could hear her heart screaming how badly it wanted Vesta, all of Vesta for who she was and for who she was becoming.

 

[Vesta]

Wrong Direction​

She could feel the tensing in her neck as she subtly shook her head slightly from one side to the other, see the shift of her view move from Quinn's face to her feet as the air she breathed began to sting. The way she said it made it sound like things weren't quite as bad as they seemed, it was just a shame that reality wasn't so kind. Things were so different now, in ways she could sometimes understand and in others that she couldn't quite place. She could see the forced place between them, knew it was because of her, understood partly why - but at the same time couldn't figure out exactly how things had managed to get so far from where they had been supposed to be. Even when the glimmer of something she felt was close to hope manifested in the other woman's heart, the recognition of what Vesta said and its association with an intention that she certainly hadn't intended to imply, she felt smaller for how differently she had begun to experience the world around her.

A younger Vesta would've noticed Quinn Varanin getting closer, even if she would've kept stoic and perhaps gone without understanding the purpose behind it, but she had lost that sort of perception without ever realizing it. She glanced back up, her rigid frame loosening as she realized how small the space between them had become, and felt, deep within her, the preparation to accept that outstretched hand - only for it to disappear with a hard swallow that came as the gesture was rescinded. Of course the words they had been paired with had led her to expecting it, but all the same it still felt so disappointing to watch her hand draw back. More than rejection, seeing how close things always seemed to be to acceptance only for something to go wrong bothered her the most. Physical touch wasn't something she cared about, paradoxical that it was, but it seemed to be the only way for her to really get what it was she wanted. It was too shallow, limited; but now she was starting to get the picture that there never was going to be that feeling she craved again.

Numbly, feeling like an observer in her own body, she took a half-step or two towards the Echani and hesitated again only to listen to the question being posed to her. "I'm.. I am just trying to figure out.. trying to do what is best for.." She started to say, her eyes darting away as she heard her voice falter mid-sentence, and paused to gather her thoughts again. "Best for the future, and how to reconcile that with what I want." Vesta finished and she felt a twinge of embarrassment in admitting it. There were ways she could alleviate the difficulty in wrestling with thoughts that she, frankly, didn't want to think about, even when she was alone and completely separated from the rest of the galaxy, but those sorts of thoughts didn't solve the problems she faced and they did little than shift the anxiety into something else. This question, and the deeper meaning she thought she was supposed to take from it, was another such partial treatment, replacing one issue with another, but she recognized the difference here between this and those.

She saw her hand reaching out before she realized what it was she had been doing, numb as she had started to become, little difference in the emotion lingering on her face. Her head tilted to the side, the muscle at the crown of her head, where she tensed whenever she raised her brow, tightened with the subtle movement of her ears. "I.. I don't know." She said quietly, truthfully. In all honesty she might've thought that she had simply misunderstood the meaning behind Quinn's question had she not already been guided towards the proper understanding of what to expect from her earlier in their conversation, but in the moment she almost wished she would have. There was a profound swell of guilt in her chest as she committed to it. "..If you would like to.." She mumbled, looking anywhere else but the woman's eyes until several seconds after she spoke, silently begging her to be the one to ask.

"I.. I wouldn't say no."

 

[Quinn Varanin]

//: Darth Mori //:

In brief moments, Quinn found herself seeing Vesta. The one beneath the surface, the one that she had found herself blindly following and loving. These fleeting moments reassured the Echani that the girl was still somewhere and that all hope wasn't lost. Vesta seemed to constantly be trying to fix or settle something. Quinn never understood it. Why couldn't the woman live in the present? If she did, could they survive? The world around them was constantly shifting and changing, causing the young princess to wonder where she fits in all of it. Was it her destiny to try and save Vesta? Or was it her life's lesson to suffer walking away?

There were too many questions, and none of them fulfilled what she wanted. Quinn smiled, "Why do you need to reconcile?" She questioned, wondering if this was about their conversation before. Vesta had vowed to create a reality where they could be together. It didn't make sense to her; why couldn't that be this reality? Another step forward as she reached out, searching for a way to be closer to the Sith. "We can figure it out together. I want everything you want." Finally standing as close as she could, Quinn reached to try and pull Vesta into an embrace.

"You're not alone. Not anymore." She paused, growing tired of talking - wanting to show how she felt since it felt easier to get her point across that way. At times, she wondered if Vesta was this way because she had lost her previous interest in her. Yet, the constant back and forth Quinn felt reverberating off Vesta only made her continue. "I want to give you want because I want it as well. I want this reality where you and I can have what we want."

Frustrated tears welled in her eyes as she continued, her voice cracking as she spoke, "I don't care if it means conquering the galaxy or leaving it all behind. I want to be at your side; please let me be the one to ease your mind, let me comfort you, let me love you."

The tears fell, staining her cheeks. "Even if it's just tonight, let me love you like I've always had - like there is nothing to stop us. Vesta, please tell me that you want this too and that I'm not just a stupid girl chasing something that isn't there."

 

[Vesta]

That's just the way things are, isn't it?

Life, love, it all seemed so easy at the beginning but somewhere along the way the walls just begin to cave in and everything becomes much more difficult than you ever imagined - standing here, lost, Vesta felt very much the same way. It would have been so much simpler for Quinn Varanin to have just let things die the moment she'd been given the opportunity, or to do entirely the opposite, but that just wasn't the way the Echani's mind seemed to work. As opposed to trying to sort things out on the spot like this, as if she hadn't had quite enough time to figure things out on her own, she nearly preferred the crushing thought of being little more than used to actually facing her own problems.

Now that she was staring them in the face.

"If you're asking me if I am still whatever it is you thought I was then, doesn't that mean I'm not?" She asked. There wasn't bite behind her words, if anything she seemed uncertain of herself at most, but it was still asked pointedly. No, she wasn't anguished over the idea of finding purpose in the galaxy anymore, or trying to live up to whatever reputation her parents had, or serving some empire under the notion that she could take it some day if she was so inclined - if that was the sum of her entire persona, at the time, then she was decidedly not the same Vesta that Quinn wanted. Quinn, in much the same way, wasn't rightly the same person that she had been so interested in, either, but Vesta understood quite well that people were more than their vices or their faults. She had grown up, they both had, and the circumstances they had been exposed to had shaped them.

There was a weariness around her eyes, a sagging at the shoulders, and her back was only sometimes quite straight. Vesta didn't philosophically speak about the state of things as they pertained to her because she wasn't looking for any purpose, she had found it in discovering what she had lost. Like a sculpture that had been broken and mended with new clay that hadn't been a part of the piece in the first place, Vesta was very much still there - but she was also new, different, than before. A part of her imagined that something like that must have happened for Quinn, too, even if she hadn't been quite so obsessed about it in herself as she was with her. "Things are different than they were before, but that doesn't mean I don't want you anymore."

"I never.. almost never stopped."

She had to correct herself, even if it sounded like she was implying something despite not meaning to. Cruel, omissive, and petty, Vesta still clung to the strange line of trying to at least express the truth to the people she respected whenever she was aware of it. After Rhand she had decided, for maybe a day or two, that she didn't want anything from anyone - it was hard to process that entire affair without getting angry with herself and Quinn. That wasn't really how she felt now, but it was still exception enough that she felt wasn't small enough to be kept to herself.

Her feelings, however, weren't the deciding factor in anything anymore - or, more precisely, that's exactly what they were.

"But it isn't just whether I want.. or you want.. it isn't just love that matters, Quinn." She said, expelling a sigh as she wondered whether she could explain it in a way that wouldn't make things infinitely worse for herself. "When I shielded you on Rhand did you think I had somehow just happened across some manner of immortality, some invulnerability that keeps me from being destroyed by turbolasers?" She asked, a bit more harshly than she had intended. It wasn't her intent to come across so condescendingly, it simply irritated her to have her more recent motives put into question when the opportunity to just have what she wanted was more or less within arm's reach. "I am living on borrowed time, princess. What happens when I no longer have the drive, the anger, the spite, and all of the rest of that filthy spectrum of emotional turmoil flowing through my veins is that I disappear."

"If I stop where I am now, leave everything behind, that moment comes much faster than if I keep pushing - if I get complacent because I have you, then that time is right around the corner." If she sounded stressed, her expression illustrated it well. "Why do I have to do this ridiculous nonsense? Why does everything have to be done over?" For a moment she emphasized with the children of the galaxy that threw a temper tantrum whenever they failed to find the words - she was trying with every fiber of her being to find them right now. "If I don't do that, if I don't make it happen, then everything I ever wanted has to either watch me die, or I have to suffer this miserable existence, this pointless torture, until I can't take it anymore and I end it myself."

"Love me if you dare, Quinn, because it won't matter in the end - if I succeed then you won't ever remember this happening, and if I don't then I'll be dead. Tonight, tomorrow, a year, you can do whatever you want to, with, me as long as you understand that."