Private Day 1

[Jem Fossk]

Dagon Kaze
Spintir | Dawn Temple
Day 1

Jem paced in the bare confines of her room. It wasn't much, nor she didn't expect it to be. Valery has said the temple was in disrepair and they were here to fix it. There was a metaphor there and Jem didn't like it. At least the mountain's chill didn't howl through the cracks in the stone.

They had arrived late at night. Jem didn't sleep. Her thoughts ran circles over the turn of events. She hadn't planned on being alive right now, never mind walking free. Freedom might be a poor description of her current situation but it wasn't prison and it wasn't her father. The autonomy unnerved her.

She paced her room, confining herself to dimly lit walls and her own tortured anticipations.

The other shoe would drop. It always did.

 

[Dagon Kaze]

It was the height of the Stygian Campaign when Dagon last was on Spintir. He'd met Valery for the very first time and asked for aid in the New Jedi's war against the Sith Empire. In some way, his visit today wasn't too different. The veteran battlemaster had offered her help in Jem's redemption and her own war against the dark side that plagued her heart and mind. Even more, it was Valery's composure that had pushed Dagon away from that place of fear he'd found himself during Jem's trial; dread that his hand could only be detrimental to her redemption, much like it had been to his brother's.

That same hesitation still faintly lingered in the raven-haired Knight's footsteps towards Jem's room in the temple. The ground beneath his soles felt as if it was moving as if he was stepping on moving plates of glass that would either break under his weight or a misstep would plunge him into a fall. It strongly reminded him of his relationship with Jem during her fall to the Dark Side -- a faint flame of hope dowsed by an ocean of the inevitable.

He felt as if he was a shadow of his own self. A shattered reflection of the usually confident, full of bravado, Jedi Knight. Dagon swallowed, breathed in, and knocked on the door.

"Jem--" his voice trailed off with the wind that suddenly sought to yank him away before he planted his feet stubbornly, "-- it's time we talked."

Jem Fossk ​

 

[Jem Fossk]

The door swung open at impact, the latches warped from the cold.

Jem froze where she paced, her eyes wide and exclaiming one, familiar thing: Master? For a moment she felt a spark of hope. Dagon's presence was unexpected. It scattered the voice and her fears like a light did to shadows. For a moment, everything felt okay. Then she remembered what she had done. Her betrayal, her actions, the pain in his eyes as she tried to kill his new padawan while she made watch.

That hope died in its place, dread coiling in her gut as she stumbled a step back. Her fear was unmistakable, as was the guilt. She had wronged him. She knew it. She had tried to make the most of it, but killing her father didn't fix what she had done to her mentor.

That bullet had been a one way ticket to closure, now that that was gone there was no way out of this clean. Her knees knocked together as she struggled to face him.

"I don't know what to say."

Dagon Kaze

 

[Dagon Kaze]

His shoulders faintly slumped and his head slightly declined to make his form less imposing as he tried to present a figure that was no judge, no jury, and certainly no executioner. The walls of the room seemed to collapse against each other, despair and regret reeking in the air of what was supposed to be a room of solitude and clarity. It seemed as if the toll of her actions had morphed the chamber into a cell of anguish.

Walk.

Dagon reached to softly touch his apprentice's shoulder and gestured for her to follow him outside, "C'mon, walk with me." he glanced around the room, "You need some fresh air, Jem."

"It helps. Believe me." he was reminded of the freedom found in the rushing wind against his face atop Denon's skyscrappers.

Jem Fossk ​

 

[Jem Fossk]

Jem flinched at the touch, braced for the blow that didn't come. Dagon had never raised a hand to her before but it didn't stop Jem from coiling tight in anticipation. Survival under her father had looked like many things to Jem.

Kindness. Forgiveness. The ability to look backwards and hope. These had all been written out of the way she saw the world. Her father had taught her that her suffering made her stronger. Pain was the forge in which she would become someone worth anything. When she was forced to look her master in the eye, all she could expect was more of that. Pain.

"It helps. Believe me."

She shook her head, disoriented but mailable to his attempts to remove her from her self-constructed chamber.

"Why are you here?" The challenge was soft-spoken, confused by the angle he was taking with her. "I betrayed you.

 

[Dagon Kaze]

"Because it's time we talked." he repeated, the hand still gesturing for her to leave the chamber with him, "About everything -- from start to finish." Dagon ignored the mention of betrayal, sticking to a more methodic, familiar approach to their wounds. Only the purity of truth could mend the ailing bond of master and apprentice.

Jem Fossk ​

 

[Jem Fossk]

Jem hesitated, then stepped out.

She knew the way to the court yard. She would be ashamed to admit she had the exits memorized, just in case... Well. She was still here, wasn't she? She guided him, glancing back in erratic, panicked intervals to confirm he was still there.

There was no knife in his hand.

He hadn't suddenly morphed into her father.

Her ability to trust had been shattered, but she still managed to bring herself into the courtyard and circle around to face him. It was hard to feel the fresh air over the heavy layer of anticipation. She wrapped her arms around herself and glanced back at him, the rising sun casting faint color across her skin.

"What do you want to know?"

 

[Dagon Kaze]

The paranoid glint in her glances and tensing of her body reminded him of his brother's disturbed state driven by his fall to the Dark Side. Everything was a threat. Everything was a trap. The fear energized the corruption and it in turn subdued more and more inches of one's heart and mind. Tap into its sweet power and nothing could ever overcome you.

"Cato Neimoidia -- where it all started." Dagon said calmly, eyes narrowing against the morning sun, "What happened?" from his own investigations to Kyra's premonitions -- it all paled against the word of Jem herself.

Jem Fossk ​

 

[Jem Fossk]

Jem let out a shaky breath and looked away.

That felt like a different life. It was a different version of herself, at least. She thought he had understood what she had done, but every step that had taken since then had made it clear that they had not been on the same page. She could blame him for doubting her and he could blame her for not communicating, but at the end of the day the blame would get them no where.

Her father was defeated. There was nothing to gain with a lie.

"It was a trap," she reported, her voice monotone. "You had almost died, do you remember? Just three weeks before and there we were again-- he was relentless." The words spilled out, gaining momentum as she went. "He was never going to kill me-- but I knew you'd come anyways, cause that's what you do. And I couldn't lose you okay? I couldn't." She managed to look at him then, pain brewing behind the muscles that twisted and wavered.

She would not cry.

She would not be so weak.

"I thought I could handle him." That had been her first mistake.

 

[Dagon Kaze]

The past could not be forgotten, or rather - it must not. It holds in memory the mistakes that turn into lessons; without the past, one has no future. And yet, lessons from the past could only be learned after a pure and honest reconciliation. Forgiveness and redemption were core tenets that lay the foundation of what it means to be a Jedi. Neither master nor apprentice could move forward without reconciling, without learning from their past transgressions. And neither could be truly called a Jedi before that, either.

The certain degree of stoicism with which he carried himself as they meandered through the temple, somewhat foreign to his own outgoing and intimate nature, allowed him to listen without the burden of the emotional trauma surrounding everything in the most recent events.

Dagon remained silent. For a long moment, it was only the sound of their footsteps echoing across the temple's hallways and the droplets of snow melting through the gaps of ancient window frames.

"We all make mistakes, Jem." he started, then shook his head, "Force knows I've made plenty, but --the point is learning from them. Bettering ourselves as Jedi and our service to the Force." he paused, looking at her before adding, "Our bond as master and apprentice does not supersede our duty as Jedi, Jem. The emotional links we forge with those close to us must only strengthen our conviction but never be an influence on the decisions we take."

Jem Fossk ​

 

[Jem Fossk]

Anger sparked like gunpowder in her chest.

"I'm not a jedi," she snapped. "I know what I traded. I know it was wrong-- but you can't say there was any other way because there wasn't." She pulled from him, stopping on the threshold to face him for the first time.

"I think about it every. waking. minute. We were weeks from losing the war-- There was no other solution, no one else could have gotten close enough to him. If I had followed your stupid jedi code, everyone would be dead."

She stepped into the snow-dusted court yard, leaving Dagon on the edge of the temple's warmth as she jutted until in to the dark alone. Her brittle anger was a shield not even the harsh cold could breech.

She wrapped her arms around herself and whispered, almost inaudible. "I could never let you die. I did served the force."

 

[Dagon Kaze]

He halted as she moved in his way, leaving him inside the temple's shelter as she stepped unto the snow of the courtyard. The winter sun lazily rose in the distance, its rays piercing through the dimly lit hallways of the temple. Smoke billowed from the chimneys of the nearby settlement as its residents prepared for the new day.

A new start.

Dagon leaned down to her level, hands falling on her shoulders softly, "There is no death, there is the Force." he whispered, then continued, "Jem, our bond cannot define you. It can only be a source of strength -- whether I die in this war, or of old age, it doesn't matter. We serve the will of the Force and we protect it from those, like Solipsis, who dare to shatter it." a long-held sigh escaped his lips as his eyes drifted across the floor before bringing his gaze upon her once more, "You did what very few could -- returning to the Light, Jem. You saved us on Tython, but... this guilt you carry that you try so hard to conceal... you need to learn to forgive yourself or its weight will pull you back down into the darkness that still permeates your mind."

"That, and the fear of losing me, or anyone else close to you.."

Jem Fossk ​

 

[Jem Fossk]

How many times had she yearned for this very moment? Forgiveness, as fragile and unspoken as it was, from none other than Dagon. She could feel all those countless nights of burning pain and frustration again. This had always been unachievable. Impossible.

Fitful dreams and burning hallucinations had all centered around this one point. Where were they now? Why wasn't he screaming? Their pain made more sense than his gentle touch ever could. But it reached her inside the torment.

It resonated where not even the brittle cold could.

Her body began to quake, broken down by the patient compassion that stayed. Unwavering. Washing over her like mist at the sea, until she was forced to realize... she was damp. Tears streamed her face, the small quiver crescendoing into sobs. They overtook her as she reached out for him in turn, the girl collapsing into nothing short of a hug on his sturdy frame.

"I don't know how," she confessed, the Jem he use to know shining through. Her fingers twisted into his jacket, reassuring herself he really was there.

 

[Dagon Kaze]

A lump formed in his throat as tears poured down her cheeks and she squeezed him into a long-awaited embrace. Each shudder of her slender frame, each sob, rattled the armor of composure the Knight had donned until the chainmail was nothing more than crumbling, brittle steel. His hands refused to leave her hug and brush the tears trickling down his own face.

"It's okay, Jem..." he swallowed, "...we'll find a way -- we always do." Dagon gently rubbed her back, consoling the suffering apprentice, "Out here... it's a start -- away from everything... okay?"

"It's gonna be fine..."

"... I promise."

Jem Fossk ​