Private Hometown Zero

[Arris Windrun]

Nilira Vornix
​

Her words sank her more than any weapon could. Did Nilira know this?

Of course she did, Arris thought. How could she not, after seeing her for who she really is? The cyborg struggled to keep her eyes level with the acolyte, but still, she resisted the urge to look away from that which shamed her.

"I know!" Arris shouted back. "I get it! There's nothing I can do to change what's happened. But we can still move forward."

The cyborg rose to her feet. She wanted to reach out and offer a hand, but all she could imagine was Nilira dismissing it. Or worse, not acknowledging it at all. So, she kept each limp at her side like a scolded child in defeat.

But the mention of Vestra? That irked Arris greatly. Metal fingers twitched, nearly curling into a fist.

"Vestra is an animal," Arris spat back. "And Mercy is a self-centered tyrant." She hated them both.

With a finger pointed at her own chest. "I am here for you, Nilira. Even if..." She considered how the acolyte had spoken, even if she couldn't quite understand it all. "Even if I wasn't there for Neriah. I'm here now."

She cracked a smile. More like a mask to cover her fear. It crumbled instantly, and she lacked even the strength to frown. Instead, she gave Nilira that same dead look she always wore. Something they had in common.

"I can't be your master, and I can't be your friend. But I want to be there for you... as..." She considered what Nilira really was to her, even beneath the pathetic guilt of it all. Family? "A sister?" She muttered. "Someone you don't have to like, but someone who will be there for you no matter how many times I fuck up."

What Arris wanted to promise was that she'd get better. But she knew such a promise was poison, even if she meant to keep it.

 

[Nilira Vornix]

Tag: Arris Windrun

"Arris. You are thinking about this all wrong. Stop."

In the past, Neriah would have crumbled. She would have started sobbing her eyes out, or screaming at Arris, but Nilira did neither. Perhaps that made it even worse as she turned to look back at Arris with not a single ounce of emotion in her gaze, nor in her voice. A small sigh escaping her lips in response to Arris' words.

"I am not Neriah. She is dead. Gone. No-one saved her. No-one trained her. If you want to be here for me, so be it. I don't care either way."

She couldn't trust Arris. She couldn't trust anyone involved with the Dark Side. It would be suicide to trust any of them. Neriah had trusted Kirie. Had let herself feel hope. And that hope and Neriah died on Coruscant when Kirie tried to abandon her. In Nilira's eyes however, Kirie wouldn't care that she had killed the ex-Padawan.

"Family is a chain that holds Sith back. Power is all that matters. Yet without a master, I am stagnant. Regressing. A festering, decaying pit of flesh."

As much as Arris was doing her best to make amends, in Nilira's eyes, the person who needed to forgive Arris was dead. Gone. Never to return. But once more, that was a lie she made to herself to feel better about the state of things. The Acolyte just slid the gauntlets off, using the Force once more to take them off, a small shimmering of the Force forming almost like a hand to remove them before Nilira chucked them off to the side.

"You can do what you want Arris. I can't stop you. I don't have the strength for it. But the girl you "cared" for? She is gone. And will never come back. And know that you waste your breath everytime you try to get me to move forward. The dead can never move forward"

​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Nilira Vornix
​

Whatever delusional gladness Arris felt vanished there, right when Nilira told her to just stop.

She leaned slightly forward, as if somehow an inch closer would reveal something different than what she was hearing. But as her acolyte continued, she realized was going all so, so wrong. Right when Arris believed she was a changed person, as if that alone would fix it all, Nilira proved her wrong.

Still...

"I'm not trying to bring anyone back!" She protested and stepped forward, hand over her chest. "Do you think I chase power?! I don't!"

'I'm not Mercy,' She ached.

"I'm Arris fucking Windrun - look it up."

Yes, she thought, 'That is who I am.'

She stepped closer, on a slow but relentless path towards her. That hand on her chest extended outward, one pointed finger affixed on Nilira, and the synthskin around Windrun's eyes peeled back as her face tensed, revealing a glance at all that artificiality behind the mask of someone else.

"This is unbelievable," Arris laughed. Not happily. She was fucking mad (of the institutional variety). "Can't she leave me alone?!" She was no longer looking at Nilira, and her finger fell to her side. Still pointed, but at nothing in particular.

"Maybe she's dead. Yeah. Probably. I fucked that one up real good. It'd be easier to believe she hated me when it happened, but I don't think she did."

Now, she merely paced around the room, attention absent from Nilira.

Arris screamed. "Is that my punishment forever? I can't save one fucking girl?!"

She grabbed at her hair, and what small amount of self-control that prevented her from literally tearing her body apart couldn't spare the poor hair tie holding it all back. It snapped, pulling out a few of the synthetic blonde strands, letting the rest fall disheveled down her head and shoulders. Finally, she looked back at Nilira, a deranged image of a woman who couldn't hold it together anymore.

"What good has power done for me? Tell me that. Because from where I'm standing, I can't even get to you - living in that head of yours. Disinterested in everything. No, you're afraid to move forward." Arris grimaced, then scowled, the skin shriveling along her nose.

"It's easier to live in a static world, where you're a blur and not a person." She threw her hands dismissively. "Externalize all your problems. Make them about the galaxy, your circumstances, and other people. That way you've got nothing to do, yeah? Nothing to fail."

Arris took a deep breath, eyed the gauntlets on the ground, then snatched a glance at Nilira, before finally her eyes settled on the exit.

"Figure out who you want to be and then be part of something. I don't care anymore. If I see you here tomorrow, I'll take you with me. And I'll keep doing that until one of us is gone."

 

[Nilira Vornix]

Tag: Arris Windrun

The Acolyte stood there, as Arris seemed to descend further into madness. Protesting against what Nilira said, whilst Nilira herself stood steady and calm, even as the cyborg stepped closer, even as she held a finger out towards Nilira, she didn't seem to react. If anything, Nilira seemed to be more robotic than the actual Cyborg.

An eyebrow did perk however as Arris asked if "she" could leave her alone. Did she mean Nilira? Mercy? Who knew. Yet her face seemed to harden somewhat as Arris said how it would have been easier to believe that Neriah had hated her. A small sigh escaping the Acolyte's lips, as she ran a hand down her face, a somewhat growing amount of frustration finally starting to bubble its way up.

"She hated herself. She was scared. She wanted to die. But her body wouldn't let her. She had hated what she had become. Who she had became. You could not save someone who didn't want to be saved."

Arris could say Nilira was afraid to move forward as much as she wanted, but she did not react. She was not as volatile as Arris was. As some other Sith may have been. Instead her eyes narrowed on the cyborg, as she tilted her head to the side. A single question starting to jump around her brain as she cleared her throat for a moment, in an attempt to butt into Arris' words mid sentence.

"Are you trying to change yourself for yourself or for her? Are you trying to atone for her, or for your own mistakes? Those are two vastly different situations. Because you can't. You aren't the problem. That is."

Nilira flicked her finger out to point towards Arris' head. The co-processor was the problem. Without that, perhaps Arris would be normal. But at the same time, both the co-processor and Arris were basically the same at this point. You could not have one without the other, but Nilira wouldn't point that out. Another sigh escaped her lips as Arris said that Nilira had to figure out who she wanted to be. That wasn't the problem. Not in her eyes as she turned over to head for the exit.

"It's not me who needs to figure out who they want to be. Who are you, Arris Windrun? You need to figure it out."

​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Nilira Vornix
​

She paused on her way out the door, listening, but never looking back. Her hand held onto the frame with a strong grip that weakened slowly.

It wasn't Neriah who Arris had pondered on, but that didn't make what Nilira said any less somber. The Covenant killed her Master, destroyed her enclave, and abducted her to Desevro. And Arris used her as a tool. She didn't, couldn't, would not accept that all of it was somehow moot.

She was in that headspace when Nilira turned the conversation back onto her - questioning her intentions. She didn't even need to look back to feel Nilira's finger pointed at her head.

"You aren't the problem. That is."

Fear. Arris was afraid. Until now, she hadn't realized how she started to forget that it was there. It shook her. Was she just so busy, so distracted? Or, was it something else - something insidious?

"It's not me who needs to figure out who they want to be. Who are you, Arris Windrun? You need to figure it out."

"Oh."

That word, that small admission of her acceptance (or was it resignation?) lingered in the following silence.

Then, she left.