Private Damn Fool Idealistic Crusade (Quinn)

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

DROMUND KAAS

-rebuilt and regrown in all its glory, stark architecture looming above despondent jungles-

-Ashin never could return here without thinking back nearly thirty years to Omni's cataclym. She almost couldn't return here at all, but that had nothing to do with those particular bad memories.

Well, not nothing. If she'd killed instead of spared a certain nanobot-suborned vizier by the name of Zambrano...

Getting lost in memory was a bad way to go about an incognito visit to the Empire's heart. She steeled her mind and knocked on the door that - she was reliably informed - belonged to her daughter Quinn.

 

[Quinn Varanin]

Ashin Cardé Varanin ​

Days ran together, and there was no change. She never moved, never left the small room that belonged to her. The room was supposed to be shared, believed to be where she felt safe and loved. No longer did she think those things anymore. Even the thought of them was foreign. Vesta was gone, leaving nothing but a note - didn't even bother to tell her face to face. ​

​

Quinn laid there, cheeks stained by mascara that bled black onto the pillow. The galaxy continued without her, but she didn't care. The one person she loved was gone and left her alone. She had seen better days and never thought she would have to face them alone. Her comm rang again, another message from Noelle. Reaching up, she looked at it and cursed it - how could her sister understand anything. ​

​

She shoved the device into the pile of pillows she had been crying into. The vibrating machine stopped, and it seemed her sister finally gave into, leaving just another unanswered message. A knock on the door echoed, the first one since Vesta had left. The Echani girl sat up quickly and stared out into the hallway. Could it be? ​

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Nearly running, the silver-haired girl stopped at the door and exhaled. Hands wiping her eyes quickly, she didn't want them to see that she had been crying. Opening the door, Quinn came face to face with the last person she expected at her door. Blinking quickly, she raised a suspicious eyebrow and questioned the figure's existence. ​

​

"Papa? What are you doing here?" Quinn hesitated; she wanted to hug the woman and find the comfort she hadn't felt in months. Fingers pressed into the door, trying to fight the urge to collapse. As much as she was sad that Vesta wasn't at the door, seeing Ashin sent another flurry of emotions that she hadn't dealt with upon the departure of her mother. Tears welled again in the girl's eyes as she stared at her parental figure.​

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Ashin wasn't much for being able to sense things, nor did she have the same kind of Force bond with her daughters that she'd had with Spencer. So when Quinn Varanin opened the door in a manifestly miserable state, it caught Ashin flat-footed.

Unlike Ibaris and Noelle, Quinn wasn't given to...vulnerable...emotions, not in Ashin's recollection anyway. She'd always rather liked that about Quinn. So whatever had happened, here at the heart of the Empire, it must have been serious. Her face hardened.

"A moment ago I'd have said I need your help to resurrect your mother, but now I'm more interested in helping you burn whatever made you cry."

 

[Quinn Varanin]

She moved aside, letting Ashin into the small apartment. There were already burn marks through several holophotos of the young Echani girl with another. Eyes pulled from Ashin as she would close the door behind her, and she moved arms moving around her own waist, trying to harden her heart. ​

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This was about her mother, and Quinn nodded, but she knew she wasn’t going to be able to avoid the subject as to what broke her so much. She was a girl that was cold and precise with her attacks when she fought, but here she was, crying over Someone who didn’t want her. ​

​

That thought alone bothered her, shook her to the core, but she needed to be honest. She chewed her bottom lip as she thought, something she had picked up from her mother. “Someone broke my heart...her name was Vesta Zambrano. Decided that she had better things to do, left me here, I wasn’t strong enough to be brought along.” ​

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Anger seethed from the girl as she was reminded that she was too weak and needed protecting. The anger gave way to the returning sadness. “I loved her.” ​

Ashin Cardé Varanin ​

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

The apartment looked quite a mess, and a spark of actual empathy took hold. Ashin picked up one of the burnt pictures. "And clearly she didn't deserve you," she said. "Just as clearly, the Zambrano queen left because she's a thoughtless, self-satisfied princess like the vast majority of her dynasty. I'd imagine your strength had nothing to do with it."

She dropped the picture carelessly and took a seat on the edge of her youngest daughter's bed.

"Before I knew your mother...someone left me like that. I wasn't much older than you are now."

Quinn Varanin

 

[Quinn Varanin]

The words stung a bit coming from Ashin; Quinn noted that even if Vesta came back, it would probably be wise not to return to that relationship, no matter how her feelings were. Sighing softly, Quinn nodded. “I did everything I could to make her notice me. I’m lost as to what I could have done differently.” She interjected quickly, but she felt pathetic, admitting it. ​

​

Looking at the picture, Quinn moved to sit beside her papa and sigh softly. As Ashin admitted the relationship before her mother, Quinn raised an eyebrow and looked up at the woman's aged face that helped raise her. There were only her parents, they always had each other, there was no one before and no one after. “What did you do and did Mama know?”​

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"Of course - I told your mother everything." Ashin frowned. Memory eluded her, a side effect of shifting bodies half a dozen times. Much of memory was biochemical, after all.

"You know, I actually can't remember his name. Eventually all that fades as you move on with your life. I do remember going after him, pleading for him to stay, humiliating myself. And then things changed and the relationship - such as it was - wasn't what I needed after all. So that time I left him. Stole a holocron on the way out the door, I think." She laughed under her breath and wrapped an arm around Quinn's shoulders awkwardly.

Quinn Varanin