Private Day 53

[Jem Fossk]

Arlo Renard
Spintir | Dawn Temple
Day 53

Maybe this was as good as it got.

A silent, crumbled temple and no one to disappoint. Jem kept her bar of expectations low, but it would be a lie to say it hadn't gotten easier. At least, she self-corrected, easier than that first day.

She lifted a torso sized stoned from a pile and waddled it, step by step, towards a wall she was rebuilding. It felt good to be this strong again, she hadn't realized how much she had been subsisting on the darkside until... until that had stopped. Maybe the simple fact that she could live without it was enough. She often told herself that in moments of struggle.

This was enough.

It had to be, she didn't know how to bare the visits otherwise. She could feel the approach, but chose to grab another stone instead. She let out a deep breath and focused on the burn as she hefted it into place.

 

[Arlo Renard]

A scrawny boy with dark curly hair stood in the doorway behind Jem. He wouldn’t look familiar to her—wouldn’t even necessarily feel familiar—but he knew her.

<So, this is what Jedi rehab looks like.>

The telepathy might provide a clue as to his identity. There were only a handful of Jedi who communicated that way almost exclusively.

<Looks just like community service to me. Were you mind controlled or something? Can’t be blamed for your actions while under the influence of the Dark Side?>

How else could she have gotten off this easy?

Jem Fossk​

 

[Jem Fossk]

Jem stiffened, the rock landing with crooked clunk on the line.

The Warden awaken behind her at once, the being of pure light manifesting to look Jem directly in the eyes. Darkness walloped off her in chaotic spurts, present one moment before dissipating next. She swallowed hard, her heart thumbing as she held the Warden's gaze.

She didn't need her.

She didn't.

"I really would like you to stay out of my head. Please," she managed to tack on, not turning around to face the boy who never understood her. The fireworks of energy continued, but Kai may sense that he was entirely safe.

One wrong move and the warden would protect him. One wrong step towards her, and it would do the same.

 

[Arlo Renard]

<I can't,> he replied. <Telepathy is the only way I can comfortably communicate. It's always been that way.>

She had never realized that, had she? No, she never even gave him a chance to explain. He'd been too busy just trying to get away from her unpleasantness to bother trying to explain himself to her. He shouldn't have needed to explain himself in the first place.

<I thought you would've figured it out by now. But you've had your head up your own ass for so long, you couldn't see anything beyond yourself.>

He was aware of the Warden, but not particularly concerned. If anything, its presence was comforting. He could say whatever he wanted, and if she went berserk, it would rein her in.

Jem Fossk

 

[Jem Fossk]

Kill him, Darth Solipsis voice came forward, a hallucination she just couldn't shake

Jem didn't let herself break contact with the warden, her body quivering with the intensity of her experience. Not everyone was going to forgive her. She couldn't go back, only forward.

Not back, only forward.

He will never accept you.

She whipped around, red eyes boiling over with the corruption that tugged at her being. The warden stepped forward with her, it's hand pressing down on her shoulder. It was the only warning she'd get.

"What do you want, Kai," she snapped, tears of frustration streaming down her face.

 

[Darth Solipsis]

“Lowborn Sithspawn. Kill him, daughter. Give in to your hatred.”

 

[Arlo Renard]

When Jem whipped around to face him, red eyes blazing with corruption, Kai remained unmoved. His eyes were stone-cold, glaring out at her from beneath eyebrows that had sunk together. But when tears appeared on her cheeks, his furrowed brows rose in surprise. He had expected her to snap back at him, not cry. The sight of her weeping brought a sharp feeling of sudden empathy that he was unprepared for. He wouldn’t have admitted it before, but he did feel bad for her, at least insofar as he could relate her experiences with the Dark Side to his own.

<I figured you’d be on your best behavior, so we could actually get somewhere in a conversation instead of you demanding that I ‘stay out of your head’ every time I try to say something.> He walked a little to one side, surveying the wall she was rebuilding, all while keeping his distance. <Let’s get this straight now, Jem—I’m not in your head, I’m not reading your thoughts, and more importantly, I don’t want to read your mind. If anything, you’re reading mine.>

His tone wasn’t abrasive or insulting this time. There was some lingering frustration from an earlier age, when he’d been more timid and non-confrontational and unable to really stand up to her, but he was just trying to get his point across. He wanted her to understand that which she had been so quick to dismiss before.

Crossing his arms over his chest, he turned his gaze back to Jem. <I heard about your ‘trial’ and what you did on Tython. I wanted to see you after the dust had settled. Or maybe I wanted you to see me, now that I’m not a Sithspawn caught up in the Dark Side anymore.> He shrugged. <I thought maybe I could help.>

Jem Fossk​

 

[Jem Fossk]

Jem shook her head, her thoughts riddled and thick with her father's intrusions. She could never silence them, but she could chose to look at Kai instead.

"Help me?" She echoed, the fight leaving her limps. The warden's energy relaxed in turn, but remained ready, it's hand resting reassuringly on her shoulder. It didn't burn so much today.

"What could you know about all of this? You're a jedi, you're wanted, you're-- you hate me." That fact didn't sting as much as it use to. At least now she had given him a real reason to. Betraying the jedi and all.

Jem didn't need that to suck at making friends.

 

[Arlo Renard]

Kai shook his head. <I had to fight to be accepted as a Jedi. Plenty of people didn’t want me to be one. A few of my fellow Jedi even tried to kill me because I came to the Order as a Sithspawn.>

He glanced at the Warden then. The… being had relaxed its grip on Jem, but it remained watchful.

<Even the people who supported me did so with their fingers crossed behind their backs. I was assigned a master who rejected me after only a few hours. She lied and said I was ‘too quiet’, but really she just didn’t want to take a chance. She saw me for what I was and she got scared. They all watched me, waiting for the moment I would stumble. They expected it.

<The handful of people who didn't cross their fingers weren’t always there. Aeris left. Damsy left. And Dagon, the one who saved me and brought me to the Temple, who showed me what the Jedi were and made me want to be like him—he forgot about me. He went and found someone else to be his apprentice. So no, I wasn't wanted. I was tolerated. Some of the time.>

Turning back to Jem, he couldn't help but see her as she had been. Just one more person who made his life harder.

He sighed. <I don’t hate you. I don’t like you, but I don’t hate you. Especially not now, when you have some idea of how it feels.>

Jem Fossk​

 

[Jem Fossk]

Jem looked away, her vision burning as she bit back all her feels.

"I don't want your pity," she interjected, lying to them both. She had a deep-rooted need to be seen and he was the first in months to do it. For a moment he truly seemed to get it-- no false platitudes, no minimization. She had never expected that from the likes of him.

She eyed him warily, unsure if she could trust his approach at all. He was showing her more grace than she had ever shown him and it said more about her than she liked. Even with his story laid before her she struggled to pause long enough to pay it mind. It was hard to see past her own pain.

She did try.

"I am not a sithspawn, Kai, it's not in my blood. It's in my soul. What could you know about that?"

 

[Arlo Renard]

<Well, good, because I don’t pity you. But I know you’re probably feeling a whole lot of self-pity right now.> He raised his chin. <Trust me, it’ll get you nowhere.>

She quibbled over their backgrounds, pointing out that they weren’t the same. And she was right. One of the hardest things Kai had had to accept was that there was nobody else in all the galaxy who was exactly like him. While others exalted their uniqueness, he’d been searching for his double, desperately looking for someone who would understand him completely. But that was impossible.

Jem was perhaps the closest he’d ever come to finding that. So far, anyway.

<I was a baby when the Sith took me from my home. Being a Sithspawn is all I’ve ever known. And if you don’t believe me, just ask Dag about how he found me. He thought I was a wild animal at first, then a feral child, abandoned in the woods.> He stooped to pick up a pebble, turning it over in his hands. <What do you call that, if not having your soul taken from you?>

Jem Fossk​

 

[Darth Solipsis]

“Weakness.”

 

[Jem Fossk]

Jem looked away, her silence burning.

"...I'm not weak," she asserted. She shook her head and managed to step away, no longer controlled by the warden. She turned back to her wall and let her focus roll over her attempt at masonry. It wasn't much, but it was something new and she had done it. It wasn't world domination, but it was hers.

And it was enough. Her will turned to steel against the voice, telling it very firmly to shut up.

"I am sorry Dagon Kaze chose me and not you, perhaps it would have been better he hadn't. But he did, and I am who I am. I'm not going to apologize for that.

You all keep coming here telling me to get over it, move on, to find myself again," she mocked, in Ishida Ashina 's own voice, "Like it's so simple. But it's not." She brushed off a glob of cement from her wall and turned. "I don't know how to move on. I don't recognized what's left."

 

[Arlo Renard]

<Who says you’re weak?> Kai replied, unaware that she was responding to someone other than him.

She turned her attention back to her work, and he sensed he was losing her again, only for her to fire back with more than a few words this time. His brow furrowed.

<I’m not you all, I’m Kai, and I’m not going to tell you to ‘get over it’ or ‘find yourself’, whatever that means.> He waved his hand vaguely. <If anybody else gave you the impression that rehab was supposed to be quick and easy, then I’m sorry, because it isn’t quick and it isn’t easy. In fact, it never ends. It took me years just to get this far, and even now, I still screw up.>

He kicked a pebble on the ground, as frustrated by the neverending battle within himself as she likely was. <You’re probably going to spend the rest of your life fighting your dark side. And if you start thinking about how nice you used to have it, how easy it was before Solipsis sank his claws into you, I’ve got news for you: you were never really that innocent. In fact, you weren’t even all that nice of a person to begin with. So take this as a wakeup call. Being good is hard, and it never gets any easier.>

Had he been speaking aloud, his voice would’ve cracked with emotion. But all Jem could see was a slight tremble in his lip and a glassy shine in his eyes.

Jem Fossk​

 

[Jem Fossk]

Each word was a blow. Jem felt herself hardened, her muscles clenching into a thick skin that words couldn't penetrate. She didn't like hearing this, even though a part of her knew it was true. This was never going to get easier, her experience now was going to be the rest of her life. Fine! She wasn't that nice, but that hadn't make her bad. It hadn't made her a sith.

She could face the flaws in her character a lot easier than she could her inescapable darkside. What the hell was suppose to do with something like that?

"That's what you have to say?" She quipped, her words like flint. "Life sucks, you suck, this is it, deal with it? It's a shit pep talk."

 

[Arlo Renard]

<Oh yeah, because the pep talks everybody else have been giving you are so helpful.> Kai's sarcasm was unmistakable. <And you still don't get it. Life isn’t that hard, unless you choose to be good. Deal with it.>

Jem Fossk​

 

[Jem Fossk]

Jem snuffed and turned back to her wall, occupying herself with laying a fresh layer of cement.

"You're pretty shit too, you know," she interjected, after a moment of silence. "You left me to fall on the arc. You make fun of me. You're hostile all the time." The accusation didn't need the dark side to be riddled with frustration. Kai's behavior had been hurting her from the start.

"You're only here cause I've been knocked down a few notches and you wanted to see. There's Jem Gaelor, fallen, just like I said she would," She mocked. Concrete splat into pile, leveled on with more aggression than was needed.

"I don't need you showing up here, getting off on being better than me and news flash, you'll get no points with Dagon either."

 

[Darth Solipsis]

“He’s subhuman. That’ll never change.”

 

[Arlo Renard]

<I left you to fall on the arc because you acted like you didn’t need me anyway. I don’t remember making fun of you. All I remember is trying to communicate, trying to work as a team, and you pushing me away, again and again and again.>

That day at the Temple—had he been hostile? Not at first, he knew that. With a child’s naïvete, he had approached her with friendliness and was pushed away. He thought it was a misunderstanding at first—but why hadn’t he tried to explain it then? Or why not at Ponemah, when they were assigned to work together?

Because I shouldn’t have needed to explain.

Because you shouldn’t interrupt your enemies while they’re making a mistake.

Because she was still Dag’s apprentice, even though she disobeyed and argued with and embarrassed him.

Because I liked the idea of there being a worse Jedi than me.

Because it made me feel superior.

Kai took a moment to breathe, pinching the spot between his eyes.

<Yeah, you’re right. I came here to get off on being better than you.> No sarcasm this time. Just a begrudging admission that she was right. <Even though I’m not better.>

He considered himself worse than her in many ways, but if he admitted that out loud she’d probably just laugh at him. After all, what could Kai Bamarri have done that was worse than the Dark Heiress?

This visit was not going the way he’d hoped. In fact, it never was going to work out the way he’d wanted it to—with her, humbled and downtrodden, apologizing for being mean to him and asking for forgiveness. Or at the very least, promising to do better.

She wouldn’t do that because he meant nothing to her. He never had meant anything to her in the first place. And maybe that was partially his fault. Maybe it took two to form a rivalry, just like it took two to make a marriage.

<I’m sorry.>

Jem Fossk​

 

[Jem Fossk]

An intake of breath caught on her lips. Concrete slid down the handle and onto her hand, running unrestrained as she stood there in shock. She hadn't expected that from him. It was stranger still how it made her feel to hear those words.

I'm sorry.

No one was sorry. Not where it mattered. Not where it counted. Her rift with Kai was small compared to her real problems, but the little bit of space he made for her resonated.

She blinked back prickling emotions and flicked the concrete off her hand. "Well. Like you said. I pushed you a lot." It was as close as she had ever come to owning her behavior with him and it seemed to be the best she could under the circumstances. Jem didn't like feeling her back up against a wall, but what was this place but a series of walls and mirrors she had to face.

She wasn't a nice person, was she.


She cleared her throat, her chin tilting subtly Kai's way. "It's not that he doesn't care, he just... flawed. That's his loss, not yours."

A lesson vaguely gleamed from Ishida Ashina 's own firey visit. Seemed she wasn't the only padawan that needed to find worth in more than a Master at their back.