Private Day 46

[Jem Fossk]

Ishida Ashina
Spintir | Dawn Temple
Day 46

This couldn't be it.

This couldn't be all there was for her.

Jem was growing tired of the struggle. She was tired of the daily failures, the hard conversations, and the painful nights. Was this her life now? Her frustration undid her frequently, causing an undo amount of setbacks. Valery pointed out her breakthrough to her every morning, but it didn't sooth the self-imposed expectations. It wasn't enough; and whose to say it ever would be?

She was prone to stewing, so the The Curator gave her a task.


The front gate was missing its wall. She was assigned to rebuild it. She didn't see how this would get her anywhere but she stacked the stones one by one regardless. It was better than being locked down in stasis. Frustrated movements spread the cement over the new layer, ignoring the presence of someone familiar coming in from behind.

"I don't want to talk," she told it.

 

[Ishida Ashina]

"We don't have to." Ishida responded, standing near the stones that were meant to be stacked and watching the spread of melted pebbles over the larger stone.

Silence was Ishida's most fluent language. It could be hostile, it could be companionable, but it was always understood. Not saying anything often did more justice than the inadequacies of words, which could easily be misconstrued. Especially since, as fluent as she was in basic, it was a second tongue. There were always nuances that could slip in unintended.

In quiet observation, Ishida could deduce that this task probably lent itself to a few subliminal learnings. Jem Fossk 's involvement in the rebuilding of the gate might see to her wanting to preserve it if ever attacked, at the very least, it was certainly a lesson in humility.

Ishida had never built a physical wall. Emotional? Mental? All the time.

But this...?

She picked up one of the stones and turned it over in her hands, with some strain — it was heavier than expected — and supposed where it might go next.

 

[Jem Fossk]

Jem whipped around, the hostile energy popping like hot air from a balloon. Ishida. Her heart skipped a beat, her lips fluttering into a subtle smile that she quickly, quickly forced back. She had come.

Why.

Jem stood rooted, braced for the worst, but Ishida simply moved to the wall and started to help. Jem stepped forward and swiped up her spackle, panicked movements fixing the cement so Ishida could lay it down just right . The particularness of her movements could not be missed. She could have just let Ishida lay it down, air bubbles and all, and not care but did not.

Not even the awkwardness of the moment would make her do her project half assed. She had ownership over it.

She cleared her throat and smoothed out the edged, her gaze locked intensely down at the wall they shared. The layer of cement stretched all the way across the top and already showed signs of drying at the beginning.

"I... have to get this down before it dries," she warned.

 

[Ishida Ashina]

Jem Fossk swooped in, the flattened tool smoothing over goopy paste over the top of her stone before Ishida could recognize what was happening. She stepped back, eyed the movements, compared it to the stones that had already dried, and realized the effort of the task.

"I... have to get this down before it dries,"

Haste was at the heels of The Dark Heiress, propelling her forward. Jem wasted no time. The focused on her duty and would not see it undone by the naivety of her guest.

Ishida felt the magnitude of their mirror-like friendship pull at her throat, warning her to be cautious with her words. To buy herself time, she nodded and touched the gaps between the stone that Jem had previously filled, and had long since dried. Ishida had thought that had been hours ago, but apparently, it could have only been minutes before she arrived.

"Who evaluates the wall when you're done?"

 

[Jem Fossk]

Jem gave a half-hearted shrug and smoothed out the concrete for the next stone. "The warden I guess. There's three of them." She lingered unconfidently in place before turning to grab the next stone. Questions burned through her as she hefted the rock up and brought it over, her eyes skipping over everything but her friend.

She found it hard to meet her gaze, she was afraid of what she'd find there. Pity, disappointment, anger? She didn't want to face any of it, even if it did make her a coward. Her cheeks warmed with shame. She occupied herself with laying down the stone.

"Why are you here?" She made herself say. The words felt heavy. She found herself leaning in, the concrete oozing out of the sides as it supported all her weight.

A beat, and then she managed to look up, her own irises still corrupted and pained. "Nothing has changed."

 

[Ishida Ashina]

Unsurprisingly, her appearance at Spintir was unexpected. At least, that's what Ishida deduced when her friend asked why she'd carved out the time to visit.

She stepped aside to give the brunette the space to conduct proper masonry and picked at a piece of concrete that had bulged out and dried to an irregular-sized bubble of hardened grey. Her response was delayed enough for Jem to insist forward another defence mechanism. She scratched at the stone until it cracked off in her fingers, and she could squish it down to nothing more than grit.

"Nothing has changed."

One of the toughest Ishida still warred with, was the difference between hesitation and patience.

Her patience for Jem's self-denial was almost as thin as it had been the day of her trial, and she concealed her disappointment with her typically placid expression. Corrupted ruby met stormy silver and held until Ishida blew the dust from her fingertips.

"Why's that?"

 

[Jem Fossk]

Frustration rippled through her features, starting from the crinkle of her nose to the tightening of her brow. Wasn't it obvious? Jem couldn't put it into words, but she puffed with agitation and turned away again. How could she explain the cycle she fell into as anything other than self-inflicted? She wanted the blame to else where, she wanted the explanation to be anything other than she was too weak and stagnating. She didn't want to be seen like this, but she knew that there wasn't a lie she could say that Ishida wouldn't see right through.

"You're impossible," she accused.

She left for another stone, carrying away her pocketful of excuses and the terrifying fear that Ishida would turn away again. "...Have you seen him around? Dagon," she pried, not looking backwards.

 

[Ishida Ashina]

It was like watching stones skip across water, the way Jem's expression rippled and revealed what was inside. Her skin's subtle shimmers did little favours to help her conceal anything either. Ishida just remained quietly observant until she received an answer, any answer.

"You're impossible,"

Instead, she got a non-answer response.

Evidencing the depth of her frown was intentional. Disapproving, almost. And it deepened even further, almost to a scowl, when Jem asked about Dagon.

It had been revolting to watch her vye for his attention during their makeshift trial, and Dagon had hardly the gull to make eye contact. She'd hoped that part of the process Valery Noble was conducting here in the mountains had more to do with the importance of self-worth and deciding to value the person Jem was supposed to be choosing to be.

"I have not." Ishida answered, keeping her words clipped.

"You've been here more than a month," she dusted the top of a brick and adjusted her tone to be more thoughtful, less terse. "And you're still looking for him the same way you did when I last saw you.

Is that why nothing's changed?"

 

[Jem Fossk]

Jem's balk was hidden behind her back as she heft up a new stone. She was glad she couldn't stop her work, it gave her time burn as she swallowed back the burning implications from her friend. "He was my master," she answered slowly, ears picked for trouble. Jem couldn't help but to mirror Ishida's intentional carefulness. Something about it felt dangerous, like one wrong word would set the tattered remains of their connection aflame.

Jem couldn't help but to hope that those threads between them were still there-- otherwise why else would Ishida bother to come? To see it for herself? To say goodbye? ...Actually, that was all a possibility too. Jem swallowed hard and brought the stone over, no longer looking up as she worked.

She didn't want to find the answer on Ishida's face.

"Everyone's wrong. About falling. You don't forget about the people you left behind. You don't not care. Of course I look to him," she confessed, smoothing out the concrete on the newly laid stone. The motions were repetitive, self soothing, as images of her father's crumbling body remained locked in her mind.

"He's all I have left."

 

[Ishida Ashina]

As much as Jem Fossk was trying not to look at Ishida, Ishida was trying not to look at Jem. The brittleness in her friend's voice was tough to stomach, and she couldn't stand watching her skin shimmer anymore. It was a vulnerability the firrerreo couldn't seem to control. And Ishida was loathe to witness it.

Instead, her silvery eyes looked over the wall Jem was building. Stone by stone, she was eclipsing the spanless blue horizon.

"...and coming back?" "Refreshing. Painfully refreshing."

In contrast to Dagon's experience with darkness, Jem didn't seem refreshed.

She still was holding on.

"If you keep thinking he is, he will be."
Masters and students were complicated things. Maybe she was harsher now because she'd lost hers on Tython, or because she'd never liked Dagon — or maybe because severe co-dependency made her skin crawl. Whatever it was, Jem's fragile admission, as heartfelt as it was, only steeled Ishida's intolerance further.

"But he's not all you have left." Ishida still looked out at the clouds, before she purposefully moved and positioned herself so neither she or Jem could escape eye contact.

"You are stronger than relying on his approval, you know. What you did, what you went through, that was for you. That was for your blood, your name. That was your choice to protect the family you chose. And you did it despite everything that was against you."

She frowned and gestured to the drying cement.

"If you don't do this for yourself, you'll never get out of here. You have nothing to prove to anyone but you."

 

[Jem Fossk]

Maybe that was the thing. Jem didn't want to get out of here. The concept of it scared her.

Her lips twitched and pressed together, holding back sharp pricks of pain and grief. She could feel Ishida's distaste-- intangible and yet present as the woman pressed Jem to face this.

They had never been so forward with each other before. It challenged the boundaries that made their friendship work-- two girls composed of walls and ticks that both had seen and neither had tried to overcome. They understood each other, they respected each other, and that made this all hit that much harder.

There was was no where left to hide here.

"What if you're wrong?" She dared to ask, finally meeting Ishida's steely eyes. "What if I slip; what if I hurt people? I want to come back-- more than anything I want to come back-- But I don't recognize myself anymore," she confessed, her voice ripe with the self-hatred that had been holding her down.

"It's paralyzing."

 

[Ishida Ashina]

“What if.” Ishida repeated back and briefly looked beyond Jem to the temple that housed her. Once upon a time, someone has thought what if I built a temple here. And their ambition had seen it done.

How many others had wondered the same thing and had been doomed to inaction?

“Either the two most ambitious words, or the saddest in your language.

Seems action determines which is which.”

Words hopped out of her before she had time to fully consider their implications. Jem's tone bled agony, and her voice's modulation met the shimmery shifts of her skin.

Her apprehensions weren’t inconsequential, but Ishida wasn’t necessarily qualified to talk her out of them. Recognizing and being self aware of what held her back, got her closer to being the capable Jem she knew.

"Not recognizing yourself might mean you're ready to become something new.”

 

[Jem Fossk]

Something... new? The concept drew her forward, like the bitter sweat promise of a candy after a shot. She tried to think about all the ways something new might look.

Jem, alone on roof tops, saving people from fires... Jem, facing down the remains of the sith and dodging their fire like a leaf in the wind. Jem, on a ship in deep space, doing... nothing. Or something.

Maybe everything.

What would she be if she couldn't return to the girl she was? She knew one thing for certain, she wouldn't be this.

She swallowed hard and nodded in understanding.

"I-..." She glanced away, sentimentalities catching on her tongue. I'm glad you came. Thank you. Don't give up on me. They weren't that far gone-- Jem still had some self-respect.

"It's boring up here," she deflected, changing the topic all together. She glanced back at Ishida with a grimace on her face, the simmering silver warming to gold. "...Status report?" She requested with a ginger shrug, asking about the order for the first time.