I Won't Fail You Again

[Alric Kuhn]

A holo-projection would appear. Bright blue and illuminating, a 3d image of Alric Kuhn sitting in a small chair. His hair was disheveled, his beard had grown, his eyes had bags under them, and he looked as though he had been carried through the nine hells and back. There was a deep sadness that clung to his expression, great loss clinging to him.

Lily, Rose, It's me. It's dad.

I know you may not want to see me, I know you're angry, I know you're disappointed, I know that part of you is disgusted at the very sight of me. But I need you both to listen.

We left you, I left you.

I can't take that back, I can never take it back. I know that, and I'll have to live with it for the rest of my life.

Alric looked at his own hands for a moment, then back towards where his children would be standing before him.

A lot has happened since I've been gone.

I've been watching you, I've been paying attention. I know that you've both suffered, I know that you have both struggled. I won't ask you to forgive me. I won't ask you to look me in the eye and say that everything is alright. I know it isn't, but I can tell you that it will be.

I'm back.

I'm back and I won't be leaving again.

I'll understand if you don't want to speak to me, I'll understand if you don't want to speak with me, but there's...

He choked up for a second, biting his lip before looking back up.

There's something important I have to tell you. Something you both need to hear in person.

Alric stopped again, then looked at his daughters.

I love you.

I love you more than I love life itself.

I'm back for you I'm back to help you, guide you, be the father that I should have been while I was gone. I'm here. I'll always be here. The two of you are my everything, and I won't give you up again.

He shifted in the chair, wringing his own fingers as a way of distraction.

You can contact me through this communicator, or call Uncle Kiran. Either way, I'll come get you when you're ready.

I promise I'll explain everything when I see you.

I love you both.

Be safe.

[member="Rose Kuhn"] | [member="Lily Kirsche Kuhn"]

 

[Hailyn]

What could she say? Kark, how could she react? Yes, she loved her father - and mother - with all of her heart, and yes it had pained her to find them gone, supposedly forever. But then to be sucked right back into her parent's lives again? It was as if the decision to leave had been trivial to them, like they didn't understand the consequences of their choices. You can't just leave your kids behind with hardly an explanation, and then just expect them to take you back after two years of struggling to make a mark in the galaxy! But the empty look in her father's eyes drained the aggression from her own, and she sank back into her plush chair to stare at the holographic display of her father's features, enlarged on several screens to analyze various details and facial markings to ensure she wasn't being lied to - that they weren't being lied to. Lily might have fallen into substance abuse and lascivious behavior, but Rose had quite literally fallen from the shelf she'd been placed on by her parents - and the single failure that she'd met on their mutual quest together seemed almost to have crushed her overnight. She knew it had nothing to do with their parents, not totally at least, but she couldn't help but feeling angry for her sister towards them for not being there for her - especially when she hadn't herself, not for much of what had happened. She saw her sister in her hospital bed and fled to their home, trying to kill herself with a deadly cocktail of drugs and a slit in each of her wrists. That night their family had fallen apart, and now here was their fething father, probably dragging along their mother, to try and make things work.

But she was jaded. Every day she'd hoped her parents would come back, that they'd try to at least reach out to them, send word to them that everything would be alright, but with every passing day she slid further and further away from her sister until she realized one day that she hated her. Not because there was a fight between them, not because she'd been so successful, but because each time she saw her the only feelings she witnessed from her sister was anger and control. Angry with their parents, but composed in that rage. Lily? She cried in her sister's arms, she drowned herself in the alcohol her sister and father were allergic to, and she took every last drug and smoked every last kind of spice to make up for her inferiority complex. Hoping she'd just stay asleep one day, maybe a coma - maybe dead. Morbid, maybe, but she wasn't built to handle the kind of stress she had suddenly found herself in - even when she had been pretending for years that she could handle it before she had been shoved into it. But even with all of her frustration with the man that sat frozen on the screen - paused while a specialist examined the footage for authenticity - Lily could recognize the context of his pronouns, the constant I's and Me's. He was back, sure - but where was their mother, where was Silara?

"Ma'am, in my expert opinion this is the real deal."

"Get out." She growled hoarsely, voice caught in her throat, with red puffy eyes.

[member="Alric Kuhn"]

 

[Rose Kuhn]

She stared.

There were no words. There was nothing she could say. Her face, still somewhat gaunt, lines etched and cut deep where her bones were was already flushed red and stained with heavy tears. Her lips were sputtering, her eyes were drained, and everything about her spoke of a wreck. She looked drained, tired, emotionless. Within both of her palms lay the small communicator, cradled as though it were a holy artifact delivered by god himself.

She watched it, looked at it as the projected image of her father sat before her. Her fingers tightened, and she tried to say something, tried to speak, tried to do anything except sit there.

No thoughts came to her, no ideas, no pondering, nothing.

Rose didn't know what to do. For so long she had wished for her parents return, for so long she had ached for the arms of her father around her, her mothers hands running through her hair, their voices soothing her and telling her it was going to be alright. Now that is became a reality, now that the possibility came to her...she felt angry.

Where had they been? Where had they gone? Why were they coming back now!

It didn't make any sense, it didn't...her lips thinned and she looked away from the image of her father. She was angry, so very angry. She could feel her pulse quicken and that whole within herself flood with emotion that would have once triggered the force. Rose wanted to scream, she wanted to kick and yell, yet all she could think to do was fall to her knees. She collapsed, falling onto the ground and leaning back against the wall behind her.

She was at a loss, so she thought of the only thing she could do. The communicator shifted in her palm and she dialed a number, one she should have called days ago.

The device beeped, and Rose spoke. "Lily..."

[member="Lily Kirsche Kuhn"]

 

[Hailyn]

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_29KxKc34E

What was there to say? The pain was still throbbing in her chest with the presumption that she was left behind so abruptly - that she'd drugged herself, ruined herself, taken out all of her grief with more self-loathing than her sister. After all, Rose had simply been angry, thought her parents irresponsible, but Lily? The one that strove for academic excellence, to be the apple of her father's eyes, to be at least recognized in the same light as her sister to her mother, what the kark did she do, how did she cope? Whose fault could it be that the two of them had been left behind but her own? It had started out with flirting, promiscuity, and then it escalated to a painful deflowering over some leather couch in a club on the morning of her eighteenth birthday with some greaseball who hardly cared what her name was, drugs pumped through her veins whenever she began to feel sober, alcohol stowed in her closet, dresser, under her bed and even by her desk at work. She'd tried to hang herself just a week ago when she realized that none of this was helping her and that she'd dug herself a hole too deep, discovered by her aide almost too late. Her teeth grit together and her nails dug hard into the soft flesh of her palms. The man that had returned was the reminder that she'd perverted her own image, became just another girl in short skirts that walked into clubs to be photographed and plastered over tabloids.

Maybe her sister could be the voice of reason - if only she'd speak. In the early days she tried to hang on closely to her sister, symbolizing her as the last vestige of her childhood innocence, only for it all to fall apart when Rose's life had came crashing down. None of this was fair, life was never supposed to have been this hard - this was the life for the idiots who walked the sidewalks beneath her company headquarters without a credit to their name, she was a Kuhn! "What is it, Rose?" Came her ragged voice, her breathing still audible and rattled as it had been when she kicked the man out of her office. If it weren't for the fact that the speaker and microphone had been directly wired into her desk she would have thrown it, too, but she settled with the expensive vase instead - chucking it right through the head of the holographic still of their father, [member="Alric Kuhn"]. She wanted to scream, but she pulled herself together - bottled everything back up to hide the lapse in control - and let out a loud, pissed off, sigh. "If it's about him, yes, that is really him." Lily said bitterly, eyes tightly shut as she rubbed the sides of her temples with the base of her palms.

 

[Rose Kuhn]

[member="Lily Kirsche Kuhn"]

Rose didn't say anything for a while, or at least it felt like a while. In reality it probably wasn't more than a few seconds, but for Rose, it felt like an eternity.

She thought about the past year of her life, how everything had happened, how she had ended up here, how everything seemed to have gotten all crossed. Her hand opened and closed, her heart raced. She had been on her way to becoming a Sith Lord. The youngest and strongest Sith to come to power in an age, prime apprentice of Vrag and daughter of Silara Kuhn. She had had such potential, such ability. She had killed Mandalorians, escaped their world on her own. She had slaughtered hundreds and ascended to Knighthood in only a few months.

Now she was nothing. She did not have the force, she did not have her power. All she had was a body of bare bones and scant flesh. Half her training was useless and most of her knowledge meant nothing now. Everything she had worked so hard for, everything she had trained for was gone.

It had all been a consolation. It had all been a way to burn away the pain of her parents leaving. Rose had always been ambitious, always held wants of power, but it was her parents leaving that had cut to her core and pushed her that extra mile, that extra mile that pressed her into the power she held so briefly, and now he was back.

She frowned slightly as her hand closed into a fist. Her lips parting slightly as her head shook and her finger finally pushed in the button on her communicator.

"You should come home."