Empath for Sale, For You 1/2$ (Spencer)

[Yasha Cadera]

Where've I gone? My back slumps against the side of a transparisteel wall and in its reflection a mass of folk from alien to human to family pet and heirloom vegetable travel by going through and through the open portal of my empathetic mind. The chrono on my wrist (which I don't remember buying) says it's been six days since my last moment of cognizant Anders time. The lapses are getting worse, my presence in the force is crying out.

That I do know, where I am, what I'm doing here, why I'm sitting with my back against a transparisteel wall are all quandries I know by now there's no answer for. Never will be. I gasp in a couple of breaths and put a hand to my forehead. The hand's shaking and my breath smells like deathsticks. I don't smoke. Maybe that explains the coughing fit. Pushing up along the transparent barrier, I stagger into the street and am in the lull again.

The woman concerned her husband hasn't come home at night past couple days, she's out buying lingerie and his favourite beer. The school boy being bullied planning revenge, the girls rushing by in gaggles of teenaged hormones, the old woman staring at me, wondering if her slim traditional safety is being revoked as I grab onto the bench beside her, and heave. Revulsion, fear, then a flicker of a deeper maternalism. She pats my side, asks me to sit. "I'm lost." I pant, putting my head on her slim bony shoulder. She pats my hair, and I don't want to die, don't want to fade off to the Force yet, there's more I can do. More I can live.

Don't take me yet, doctors and angels of the night. I don't want to go. I sob for the woman's reserved emotions. I fades for the universal 'we', there's a flat with antiques and old lace draped on signets from bygone lovers and planets by. A meal, a shower, I slept on her sofa. Then, with a bag of sandwiches and some fruit I'm released from her temporary emotional symbiosis back into the wake of a planet full of symbionts waiting for me to come too close.

I sit in the nearest thing to a park this place has, put my head in my hands and call out through the Force for anything, anyone who can help some slim fragment of individuality stick to these anemic bones.

@[member="Spencer Jacobs"]

 

[Allyson Locke]

The Force worked in ways that even confused a Master of it, though Spencer Jacobs wouldn’t consider anyone a master of the force besides the force itself. To her the Force worked of its own will and only allowed people to weave it and control it. In the end, the will of the Force always won. Something drew her to the planet; she moved quickly through space and used the force to convince those who controlled the hangers that she didn’t need to deal with any customs. The Master moved through the crowds, something called out to her, something needed her help. Stopping, Spencer felt her knees buckle pain surged through her mind as she did her best to push the emotions that were swelling inside of her out.

Whoever it was they were strong and these were strong emotions. After a moment, Spencer took in a deep breath and held it for a moment. Finally the Master put her barriers up and she was clear-headed. Moving towards the source she focused on it latching on to the strong fits of emotions, though what confused her was the different emotions. They were too far in different directions to belong to one person; she narrowed her eyes and continued to move until she came across a park bench. Blinking, there was one person and her attention fully focused on them.

Slowly she walked over towards the boy on the bench, as she walked her own emotions quiet leaving him some sort of calm. Knowing how this felt, knowing the emotions that drove her insane as a child she extended her aura. The girl was hesitant for a moment remembering the times she had calmed the minds of others when they didn’t it want it. Frowning, she needed to do this no matter even if he didn’t want it. Though if he did want the calm, why would he have cried out in the force for it?

Spender reached out into the force, focused on the mind of the boy. Her calm and the Force shrouded the boy’s mind defending it from the nature of other’s emotions. Spencer continued to walk as she stood before him and smiled softly.

“Hey there.”

@[member="Anders Sivas"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

The calm comes with a sense of inner trepidation and monotonous continuity. This has happened before, it calls, or maybe the it is a we another symbiotic relationship waiting for me to stray to it, to close in and grab on until there's no Anders only us. Only the relentless 'we'. Head in my hands, I flinch and the calm strikes again like a vine-raptor in reverse pulling poison out from the raw initial stab wounds to a pleasant flow. I've grabbed hold of my hair and pulled my knees to my chest, feet dangling in the air as my back connects to the back of the bench.

No, go away, not another one. No. Go away. Leave us be. The mind @[member="Spencer Jacobs"] touches is an empty canvas of starlight and pockets of void. As full and cavernous as deep space, naked to the humanoid eye yet to a droid or programmed scientific instrument cascading with a cacophonous symphony. How could anything be as full? How could it also be so capable of larger gulps from dimensional ethers, pulsating solar radiation and energetic flux?

A boy cries out on a park bench, not from the entrance of another imprint, but from the draining lack of them. Eyes cast upward, I stare at Spencer's face, watching the quizzical nature of the light haired female leave me with naught even a name. I push my palms into my eyes, rub the red out of them and check again. Have I snapped? Am I seeing things? I feel out in the Force, raw and unconfined as go I it is instinct and emptiness, waiting for rain in the desert to fill the jar that I might drink. Gulping, I edge a foot to the ground and pull my words out from the nether-place.

"Hi. Hi. H-hello." Was she the miracle working vine-raptor draining emotional poison? "How are you?" That's what people say, right? It's how people talk? I reach out in the Force again, trying if I can to touch her in any way I can. Was it her? "Hungry?"

 

[Allyson Locke]

“Hungry? Oh you’re hungry.” Spencer was caught slightly off guard, the boy spoke in stutters and chopped language, but why? She stared at him for a moment as she quickly assessed the situation, he was something she recognized. Though beyond the recognition she understood his feelings and the confusion.

An empath was someone who interpreted and felt emotions, but for the boy and herself at one point - it was more than just understanding and feeling...it was something deeper than that. Spencer kept the cloud around his mind protecting him for the time being. It was the least she could do, though despite the shield the only emotions he would feel would be hers. In this case, he would feel understanding and the calm still.

Extending her hand towards him, she continued to smile.”My name is Spencer, lets get you washed up and something to eat. A place like this isn’t the best place to sleep.” There was a place down the way where they could get food and Spencer would offer to take him back to the Fringe, but she decided to leave that part out until she was able to gain some trust with the boy.

“Yes, I’m like you.” She had felt him reaching out with the Force and unlike other’s she allowed him to connect with her, every ounce of her calm would pour into him as he reached out. With that she hoped she had gained some sort of trust from the wayward boy.

@[member="Anders Sivas"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

A wellspring of calm crests and falls round me, encased as I am in the express lack of the milling crowds for the very first time. I breathe and discover a breath without pain wracking at my ribcage and damning the twitch in my muscles to take over. I breathe and understand in this place I am no longer in an act of becoming, but resolute with my spine and nervous system intact, am Anders. I could cry, I really could. But it's so calm. Ocean calm on a bright day. I feel restful, back on a lazy day on Naboo. "If I'm honest, which I usually am, it's not the worst bunk I've had… but it's not comfy-safe either… What planet are we on? I lost track three or four people ago."

The affirmative of the action, this woman was like me. Empathic? I can only strive for a present form of hope that @[member="Spencer Jacobs"] is indeed 'one of us' a congregation of two in my experience and life. I reach forward and my hand shakes as it takes hers, a flash of memories I can't quite call off thundering toward her similar brain. Lives lived in microcosm, in spasms of seconds. I've been all things to all people strong enough to pull me in and change my personhood. I have known no 'me' at all. What's left is a void. "Th-thanks. Thank you. Yes, thank you. There was this old woman, she was all 'ew' and then 'poor thing' and she didn't want to die so I didn't want to die and she took me to her home and fed me sandwiches and I slept on her couch and she played with my hair and then in the morning she sent me off. Thought I was lost but it wasn't that kind of lost. She … you …. don't need to know about that."

Possibly the first bit of calm I've felt echoing through my shattered soul hits like a flotilla on the lake. My eyes shut and for a moment I bask, unashamed. "What is this emotion? I don't recognize it." Still holding her hand, I twitch and still. "Anders. I think my name is Anders."

 

[Allyson Locke]

Spencer laughed softly about at the boys adventures with an older woman. There were things in this galaxy that not even she could fully understand. The boy had an adventure and it reminded her of the adventures she had before she had met Ashin, from there she learned about the force and how to keep people from affecting her. Possibly this was her way of giving back. She would be able to teach the boy in front of her a way to shield himself from others and not be so crippled by a gift. He questioned the emotion he felt and she sat on the bench next to him. Silence fell between them for only a brief moment until she started to speak.

“Silence and calm. Its something that I never experienced until I learned how to block people out. I learned how to feel my own emotions. From there I was able to really understand myself.”

Still smiling, she nodded. “I can teach you these things” [member="Anders Sivas"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

"Silence and.. don't think I've felt either of those things to be honest. Not before now. Quiet yeah, when the murmurs die out or there's just a couple, but silence? Naw, it's beyond me in this state of… un-being?" The bench feels solid and new, as if [member="Spencer Jacobs"] had placed it when she came up with her sovereignty and mask out of presence and time. Elbows on my knees, my fingers tap together as I glance sideways at her through my dusty blonde hair.

"Think there's a 'me' in here? Not a collection of the more stable bits, but a real bona fide person? I know in space I'm the absence of the people I've previously been, but that's not the same thing I don't think. Yes. Goddess yes of course I want to learn." My voice cracks a little and my thin shoulders heave as I shake my head, mystified that it could be so easy for someone new to bring me again to myself. "I like Silence and Calm. Could get used t'it."