Private In Which Lady Bastila Behaves Poorly

[Dominic Praxon]

It is a truth universally acknowledged, though seldom spoken aloud in polite company, that a gentleman of Naboo, however distinguished, must feel somewhat out of his element when surrounded by an overabundance of Jedi serenity.

Such was the condition of Dominic Praxon as he traversed the radiant concourses of Lightspire Station, whose gleaming silver halls and benevolent lighting seemed determined to impress upon all who entered that harmony was not merely an aspiration, but an expectation. The Jedi moved about with an ease that bordered upon elegance. Dominic, in contrast, maintained the precise bearing of a statesman who would have preferred marble floors, proper drapery, and a Senate aide at his elbow.

"...and with the Parabrite reinforcement fully set, the civilian vessel stands ahead of schedule," proclaimed the logistics officer at his side, a man who spoke with such unabashed optimism that Dominic wondered whether he, too, might secretly be a Jedi. "Sensor lattice installation commences next week. A triumph, Senator, truly."

Dominic inclined his head with the polite attentiveness of a man habituated to good news arriving attached to a very large invoice. "Excellent. And the Viator?"

"A marvel, sir. Hyperdrive spooling tests begin tomorrow. The Jedi Council is exceedingly pleased."

"Of course they are," Dominic murmured, though with such genteel restraint that the officer could not possibly take offense. It was not the Jedi he objected to, precisely, but rather their alarming ability to assume that the future would unfold just as they wished it.

They passed one of Lightspire's grand viewports, where whole terraces of hydroponic gardens unfurled in impossible greenery under artificial skies. A trio of Padawans tended shimmering vines with an earnest devotion that would have touched many hearts. Dominic admired it, privately, but very privately.

He was on the verge of offering a comment of perfectly diplomatic blandness when a sound...a voice, or perhaps simply a laugh...carried across the vast hall. Something in it arrested him at once.

He turned.

There, across the atrium, stood Bastila Sal-Soren.

Shit.

She was surrounded by Padawans and fellow Knights, yet seemed entirely unencumbered by their company. Lightspire suited her in every possible way. The golden illumination gathered upon her as though intentionally arranged, while the gentle hum of the station provided an obliging accompaniment. It was a scene that might have been painted, had any artist the courage to attempt it.

Dominic felt a most unwelcome stillness settle in his chest.

It had been some time since last they stood within the same room, and longer still since he had spoken words he ought never to have uttered. One does not easily forget telling a woman — that woman — that she would "always be the daughter of a terrorist." Indeed, even he, a man trained in the fine art of political composure, could feel the faint sting of old regret prickling at the edges of memory.

His gaze lingered too long, and he felt her notice him.

It lasted only a moment, but it struck him with the force of a great many unspoken things.

Dominic looked away first.

"Send the full reports to my terminal," he said, his tone calm and perfectly polite, though he could not have repeated the officer's last sentence if his life depended upon it. "The committee will expect thorough review."

"Yes, Senator."

With that, he turned toward a nearby corridor, choosing, quite deliberately, a path that would take him in the opposite direction. His steps were steady, his posture exemplary, and his expression arranged with the utmost propriety.

But his shoulder paused - just briefly, just noticeably enough for anyone who truly knew him.

Regret, however expertly concealed, is still regret.

Bastila Sal-Soren​

 

[Bastila Sal-Soren]

One does not intend to collide with the past, if it is to collide it simply steps into one’s path with the unhelpful confidence of something unfinished.
Bastila had been listening, or at least appearing to listen; to a gentle discourse on botanical empathy when the shift in the air pulled her attention elsewhere. It was a subtle disturbance, not in the Force exactly, but in something far more mundane and far more troublesome, instinctual memory.

Dominic Praxon.

She did not move at first. A Jedi did not startle after all. Her spine remained poised, hands loosely folded before her, expression composed with a serenity she had earned, not inherited. But her eyes, unbidden and unwise, watched his transport and finally as it landed sought him across the atrium.

There he was, with his stupid immaculate posture, his stupid immaculate composure, and that stupid immaculate avoidance. Dominic, a man who could justify the collapse of an empire with a footnote and yet be undone by the echo of his own conscience.

Her pulse did not quicken. Of course it did, she had to stop lying to herself. She was a master of her own emotions, and what lingered now was not heat nor ache, but something far quieter and cooler, it was a shard, one that had been smoothed by time, but still remained sharp.

She took the time to circle around the group, feigning interest in a particularly interesting display of force growing leaves and silently, excused herself from the lesson, stepping away from the circle. Her pace was unhurried, deliberate, drawn not by longing but by a principle older than Jedi doctrine and far less forgiving;

Some words do not get to live without consequence.

She followed the corridor he had chosen, steps falling soft against the polished floor, not chasing, that would be weird, but she was closing distance on him. When she finally spoke, she did not raise her voice; she merely allowed it to exist in the space between them.

“Senator Praxon.” It was not a cold greeting, nor was it warm either. It held a level of questioning intrigue. He would halt, as she knew he would.

Bastila paused a single measured pace behind him, enough to honour dignity, not enough to permit escape.

“You know you don't have to leave the room,” she said quietly, “every time you see me.”

A thin breath slipped from between her teeth. Being this close to him, unmasked and alone was striking into her mind. The smell of whiskey was remembered on her nose.

“I’m not a ghost.” She let the words settle, “Not yet anyway, and even if I were… I’d be haunting someone less…you.”

Then and only then, Bastila stepped beside him, facing forward, she would not ask permission, this was her territory. Around them the station hummed, it’s entirety spanning beyond comprehension.

“Now that is out of the way. Good afternoon, Senator. How are you?” She turned her head and smiled out of the corner of her mouth towards him. She reminded herself that today she would not run, she also would not watch him walk away.

She had already learned what both of those things cost.

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[Dominic Praxon]

It was remarkable, Dominic reflected with a tightening of his throat, how a single voice, softly spoken, entirely unthreatening, could bring a man to heel more effectively than any Senate summons. He halted at once.

Slowly, with all the care of a man rearranging a shattered composure, he turned to face her.

“Lady Sal-Soren.” The title emerged too quickly, too neatly, an instinctive shield. His gaze flickered once, an uncontrolled, traitorous thing, before settling into the polished neutrality he had perfected over years of political survival.

Her words followed, light as silk and twice as cutting.

“You know you don’t have to leave the room every time you see me.”

Dominic felt something inside him jolt, guilt, or maybe recognition, the sharp echo of a moment he had revisited far too often in the privacy of his own conscience. But none of that reached his face.

“My business here is concluded,” he replied, far too swiftly for the line to hold any true conviction. He adjusted a cuff that did not require adjusting. “There was simply no need to linger.”

A lie, spoken with the elegance of a man who lied only to himself.

Then she asked, so simply, so devastatingly.

“How are you?”

It undid him.

Dominic’s mouth opened once. Then closed. Opened again. Then closed faster. The silence pressed in, expectant, merciless.

“I..."

"...oh. Fine.” The word stumbled, tripping over the remains of his composure. “Quite fine. Entirely so.”

He swallowed. He stood...quiet, stiff, betraying far more than any confession. “And your siblings,” he added abruptly, reaching for the nearest lifeline of mundane conversation. “Are they…well?”

But his eyes, for one unguarded heartbeat, revealed what his voice refused — You should hate me. Why don’t you? He tore his gaze away first.

Bastila Sal-Soren​

 

[Bastila Sal-Soren]

Bastila placed herself in front of him, one smooth step into his path with her hands loosely clasped behind her back, shoulders angled with the unmistakable ease of someone who was refusing to behave like the model Padawan everyone wanted her too. He couldn’t escape even if he wanted to.
Her smirk arrived first, her face creeping that small and deliberate smile, with just enough curve to imply she was enjoying herself far more than the moment warranted.

“So you came all the way out here and you weren’t even going to say hi?” she mused, tilting her head as though studying an uncommon museum exhibit, not a Senator of the Republic.

A tiny, traitorous bite caught her lower lip for half a heartbeat, it may have appeared a result of nervous energy, but it was far more calculated than that; it presented the look of a woman deciding just how much female flair to put into her words, how much discomfort was she happy to produce from him and how amused she was finding herself as she planned doing it.

“I’m really happy to find that you are ‘entirely fine,’ Dominic…” she continued, voice softer, almost sing-song, “Although are you sure? You sounded like you were trying to convince yourself in one breath there?”

She rose an eyebrow towards him playfully. “Remember I can read your mind Dominic.” She waved her hand in a mysterious arc, she most certainly couldn’t read his mind, nor would she even dare. The thought amused her however.

She rocked back slightly on her heels, and took another step to his side. Her eyes gleaming with a terrifyingly fluent understanding that she had caught him in a moment of his own weakness, making him face her with no prior warning or practice on what to disarm her with. The weapon he had decided to use also made her stare at him with childish disbelief. He reached for small talk.

“My siblings? Yes, my siblings are well,” she replied with exaggerated politeness, fluttering her lashes once just to see if he’d flinch. The truth was more convoluted then that, her siblings were not fine. In fact she was probably the only fine one out of the Sal-Soren tribe right now and that was asking a lot. “They are saving the galaxy, living up to the family legacy you know.”

Then came the shrug, it was light, breezy, annoyingly adorable.

“And I,” she added, with a playful lift of brows, “am perfectly fine too. Mostly. Depending on the week. How are your siblings?”

She gave him a look that should have been illegal; impish, knowing, slightly wicked. She was in a comfort zone that he could not break down, that gave her strength and she was entirely using it. She didn’t care how his family was, not at that moment, she probably knew how they were doing better than he did.

“You don’t have to run away from me, Dominic,” she said, stepping half a pace closer, head tilted, voice dipped to conspiratorial mischief. “Unless you want to. In which case…” she paused, grin widening to a wicked little crescent; “I suppose I should feel flattered that I scare you so much.”

Her eyes held his, unblinking, bright with something dangerously close to what had launched the last time they had been alone, at his estate, hiding from the storm that was brewing outside and within.

Then, with a playful little half-spin of her wrist, she delivered a tap on his arm that could very well be the final blow of the teasing joust, “So…” her smile sharpened, “What are you doing up here anyway? Seeing a Healer for emotional triage?”

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[Dominic Praxon]

Dominic Praxon had weathered Senate inquisitions with less strain than he endured now, standing before a woman whose every gesture seemed designed...no, fated...to dismantle the careful architecture of his composure.

Her smirk was intolerable. Her calm was intolerable. Her nearness was intolerable. And yet he could not bring himself to step back.

When she fluttered her lashes just to watch him flinch, something within him jolted painfully...something old, and shamefully alive. He inhaled too sharply. Her sing-song mockery of his “entirely fine” nearly undid him. And when she declared that she could read his mind...playfully, teasingly...he felt the heat rise traitorously beneath his collar.

“Bastila!” A single word slipped out, unarmored, before he could fortify it.

She was enjoying this. Thoroughly. And why shouldn’t she? She was standing on familiar ground, surrounded by Jedi who would not think to question her.

He, by contrast, felt entirely exposed.

And so, for the first time since she’d intercepted him, Dominic acted on instinct rather than caution.

His hand lifted...hesitated...then settled gently upon her shoulder. Not firm. It was not a commanding presence but it was unmistakably earnest.

“Come with me,” he murmured, his voice pitched low enough to avoid wandering ears. He guided her just a few steps aside, toward the shelter of a quieter alcove. He glanced over his shoulder twice...unusual, for a man who prided himself on appearing unbothered.

Only when they were afforded a sliver of privacy did he release a slow breath he had not realised he’d been holding.

He stood far too close. He did not correct it.

“What are you doing, Bastila?” The question emerged in a whisper. He sounded strained Bewildered even. He wasn't accusing her. He was simply...lost.

One hand slipped behind his back in a futile attempt to reclaim dignity. It did not help.

“You…you speak as though the past were nothing.” His throat tightened. “You stand here teasing as if....” He swallowed the rest, eyes darting from her face for the briefest, betraying second. “As if you could possibly be unaffected.” He straightened, or attempted to.

“For the record,” he added stiffly, “I did not run away. My business here was concluded. There was no need to linger.”

His voice, tragically, cracked ever so slightly on the last word. “And as for my emotional...my emotional state,” he continued, clinging to formality like a lifeline, “I assure you it requires no…triage.” A lie, spoken with immaculate diction.

He drew another breath, steadier this time, though his eyes betrayed the turmoil beneath.

“And I did ask after your siblings,” he said, trying to grasp at something neutral, something safe. “Yes. Of course. A natural question under the circumstances.” Another useless sentence.

Dominic Praxon, usually a master of language, could not get a single correct word.

Bastila Sal-Soren​

 

[Bastila Sal-Soren]

If Bastila had been satisfied merely to rattle him, she would have stopped five lines ago. In all intents she fully planned on it as well, she knew at some point she’d have to face the serious conversation and she was prepared to do so;

But when he said her name; not Padawan, not Lady Sal-Soren, not Sal-Soren;
Bastila
…something in her expression flickered.
Just for a moment.

A very small moment.

It sat deep in her chest like an ache that had always been there and then was suddenly remembered. Like his words were the sword that pierced in to reveal it.

As he guided her aside, she did not resist. She let him lead, almost like it was obedience, not indulgence; and when they halted in the shadowed alcove, she fell into place where he left her, her form having to remember how tall he was as she looked up and took in the closeness of him, she could feel the tension, the very un-Jedi proximity, and her face broke with a smile that threatened to become trouble.

"Careful the Jedi might see us and think we are up to no good." She noted as they paused the movement into the alcove.

When he asked, strained and whispered, What are you doing, Bastila?
…she let a soft, amused audible breath escape her lips.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said lightly, eyes scattering down the hallway before slowly lifting back to stare at his with infuriating innocence. “Talking. Existing. Wondering. It’s surprisingly educational.”

But her expression had shifted, a crack in her facade. It wasn’t sorrow, nor apology that crossed her face, it was deeper, something far quieter. That ache she had found made manifest across her features.

“Unaffected?” she echoed, voice lowering. “Shiraya’s Graces, Dominic…”
She leaned in, just enough that her body would come dangerously close to entwining with his and he would feel the words of breath near his cheek, but not enough to seal the distance.

“…you have no idea. Try spilling your feelings out for once and then be told what that person, the one person who you thought cared, who you truly cared for thinks of you.”

It was truth delivered with unintentional teeth.

Then, because she could not resist the artful cruelty of timing, she let the tension hang before stepping back half a pace, head angled, lips pressing together in a mock look of concern.

“Sudden retreat was actually written on the schedule?” she added with a grin. “If you’d actually wished to avoid me, you could have simply walked faster.”

Her eyes flitted to his posture, his swallowed panic, his unnecessary dignity.
Then, with unhurried grace, she reached up, not to touch, but to tap one finger gently against the front of his immaculate lapel, like a knight testing armor for weaknesses.

“Your composure is cracking Dominic,” she murmured, amusement warming into something like fondness, “It’s like you are bleeding in a very expensive coat.”

She let her hand fall, watching his reaction with unabashed curiosity.

“And now,” she concluded, tone returning to playful challenge, lips curving slowly, “I dare you to answer me properly. None of the Government talk.”

Not ordered.
Not begged.
Dared.

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[Dominic Praxon]

His eyes flickered toward her hand where it had tapped his lapel, as though the phantom pressure remained. He despised how much he felt it.

Revenge? It certainly had all the hallmarks of such a venture, at least based on the headache now thrumming behind his eyes.

His hands came to his face, and he smeared downwards. "By the Force...Bastila...you torment me so," he said, but his words were largely muffled by his hands. The expression, though, was enough to convey the words.

She was so damned persistent. And he adored her for it. It was unconscionable how vibrant and beautiful looked while acting the gremlin. It had always been her slight impertinence that had attracted him. Her disregard for decorum around him had always broached the possibility of scandal. It was thrilling. Dangerous. And she was playing him like a fiddle.

"I..." He choked back the apology before it could unfold. Hand wiping over his face to remove the words from the moment.

"Why must you vex me, Bast?" He muttered, eyes downcast, staring at her feet. The shortening of her name was another crack in the armour. Another loosening of his self-imposed moral fixtures. "Is it vengeance you seek?"

He looked up, foolishly, into her eyes. He saw his own visage reflected back at him. He did not recognise the man she saw.

"I shall be forthright. Speak plainly. And I shall do so in turn."

Bastila Sal-Soren​

 

[Bastila Sal-Soren]

For the first time since intercepting him, Bastila did not smirk. He had managed to somehow brea through and left her momentarily with a look of longing sadness.
She did not allow it to last for long.

His hands dragged down his face, his voice cracking on her name Bast and something in her core lit, startled and soft, the way a candle reacts to a sudden breath. She blinked once, slowly, as though caught off guard by how much his sincerity tugged at her chest.

Then he finished speaking, thoroughly miserable, it was a sudden moment of openness that she could dive on, insert herself within; and that wicked smile returned.

But it was different now.
Gone was the earlier teasing dance, like she had no time for mischief for mischief’s sake. It found itself replaced with something gentler, caring and just as dangerous.

“Oh, Dominic…” she breathed, stepping close enough that the alcove suddenly felt smaller, warmer, more intimate. “If I wanted vengeance, you know I’d be fully capable on having already done it...”

She let the air sit, loud with her own heart beat.

Her lashes lowered as she tilted her head, studying him not like prey, but like a puzzle whose shape she already understood.

“Vex you?” she echoed, lips parting in a surprised little laugh. “You make it sound like as though I wandered Lightspire today solely in the hopeto torment you.”

She leaned in, just slightly again closing the gap between them, enough that she could no longer look at him in the eye without hitching her head back, she drew level with the lower of his shoulder at best, her hand however had moved enough that it hovered a dangerous inch from his sleeve, not touching it. Not yet. But there was memory in that movement.

“Believe me,” she whispered, “I never have any intention of vexing you, Senator.”

Then she lifted her chin, the glint in her eyes softening as they fell upon his face with rare unguarded honesty.

Her voice dropped, barely audible.

“That isn’t why I’m doing this.”

She reached up and, with a gentleness that felt almost reverent, took hold of his wrist, the one still hovering near his face from earlier. She lowered it slowly, so he would look at her. So he couldn’t hide in his palms, or behind rhetoric, or behind the guilt he seemingly wore like an heirloom.

“There.”

Her thumb brushed once, briefly, against the inside of his wrist — a gesture so delicate he could have imagined it.

“Now you’re looking at me properly.”

A faint remainder of that mischief curled at the corner of her mouth.

“Much better.”

He had asked for honesty. She granted it, but in her own way.

“You vex yourself,” she murmured. “I only…nudge.”

Her eyes swept his face searching for that look, the one he’d given her at the gardens, she just had to know it was still there, just once.

“You don’t torment me. Not the way you think.” she added softly, seriously.

She gave a breath. As if suddenly aware how close they were.

“If anything…” she swallowed, barely; “you frustrate me because you never let yourself say what you actually want.”

Then she released his wrist, letting her warmth slip away like a withheld promise.

“So. You asked for plain speech.”
Her smirk sharpened, but her eyes were too earnest to match it.

“Go on, then.”

She spoke it like a challenge, yet she knew it sounded like she was pleading. Setting a trap she hoped he’d walk into.

“Be forthright with me, Dominic Praxon. Tell me why everytime we walk into each other’s vicinity our worlds stop and entwine until we smash it apart.”

Again she paused.

“For once. At least pretend to allow yourself to want me.”

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[Dominic Praxon]

The way she moved his hand. They way she entered his orbit like she belonged. It drove him mad.

Upon their first meeting, Dominic had been enamoured with her. She was beautiful, no doubt. She excited him, without question. She stirred his very soul, he would not deny it. And yet. That was not what he sought in life. He sought power; power for the good of the Republic. He could fix the rot that had already begun to set in. He knew he could.

With all that in mind, Bastila was dangerous. And his love her for even more so. Therefore, it must by all means be denied a chance to flourish.

And yet, despite his horrid behaviour. Despite his brutal words. She stood her, holding his wrist and looking into his eyes.

"You are persistent," he said, almost in awe, "no denying that."

In spite of himself, his heart thumped. All the reasons why not filled his mind. She was too young, people would whisper. There was growing anti-Jedi sentiment, clearly left over from the defunct New Way. She was unpredictable, a firebrand...heat itself. She was not a safe choice for him. The voters would accept him married to a well-spoken, meek young noble...but the firecracker Padawan that made a bid for the throne of Naboo? He had already gone out on a limb to nominate her for the role. Being seen with her.

The optics. He had, always, to consider the optics.

But the way her thumb stroked his wrist. His mind almost faltered. Body responding to almost push forward, and into her, but he refrained...barely.

Dominic closed his eyes. But he could still feel her.

"Speak. Plainly. I did...on the day you declared us written in the stars," he said, wishing so to lean his chin against her forehead.

"It is naivety. Bastila. Naivety and poor politics that plucks our heartstrings to the same tune," he muttered, wishing he could mutter the words against her cheek.

"I am not the man you wish me to be," he said ruefully, wishing to have breathed the words upon her lips.

"I am not romantic. I am not a man who will permit himself led by the fires of passion," he said, longing to pull her close.

"Pragmatism. Politics. Both dictate, we cannot be," he said, desiring only to slam a door closed behind them midst of flurry of want.

"You once promised me your heart. Even if it were in secret. But you could not abide for a moment the thought of the political performance," he said, mind lingering on thoughts of unfulfilled needs, "my face still stings. Secret, you said. But you did not know what it truly meant."

His hand twisted, taking her hand and pushing it away slightly. But there was a pause. A lingering, wistful moment.

Dominic's mind had travelled far from safety. Into imaginations of long nights, but he retreated. A half step back. His hand pushing hers away, just slightly.

"No more promises, Bastila. No more half made frivolities of youth. It is time to grow up and accept our paths," he said, lump in his throat betraying his heart.

His life was so well ordered. His path so clearly laid before him. And yet, the mess was all he craved.

Bastila Sal-Soren
Post referenced​

 

[Bastila Sal-Soren]

She decided it was best to say nothing as he spoke.
As he pushed her hand away.
As he attempted to yet again call her a child.
As he continued to wrap himself in duty like a shield he hoped would make her disappear.

She didn’t flinch as he did these things.
She didn’t turn away in anger or rejection.
She didn’t even blink, those eyes of hers locked on his face for the few moments that he did engage her eye contact.

She simply studied him.

Then as he seemed to finish his internal decisions and made a call for them to grow up she stepped back into his space.

It wasn’t a slow step either, there would be no confusing this for hesitation. No it was done with the force of someone who had already made her decision and was adamant on displaying that.

“See the truth is always better…” she said, voice low enough to vibrate in the narrow alcove. “As rare as it is from you.”

Her hand rose placing her fingers against his jaw, gently, firmly, tilting his face toward hers. Her thumb traced the place where tension had gathered at his cheek.

“Force damn it Dominic,” she breathed, leaning in just enough that her lips brushed the air near his, ever syllable of her words pinging in the air like a snare drum she was so close. “You infuriate me.”

She didn’t give him time to answer.

Her other hand slid to the back of his neck, deliberately claiming him in a way that made every argument he’d ever made crumble into dust.

She closed the last inch.

Their lips met.

It was not some soft, timidly sweet flutter of youth filled with hope.

This was a kiss pulled tight with restraint and held of unspoken need; a collision of truths denied too long and fought against too hard.

She felt him exhale into her mouth, with a sound halfway between surrender and shock.

She pressed in closer. He was hers at this very moment, and she wasn’t going to let anything or anyone stop this moment of reality.

One hand moved into his hair.
The other pressed into his chest as she forced him back, his back hitting the wall.
Her lips creating slow, devastating certainty.

There was no teasing now. The time for coy smiles and mischief was in the past. There was just her with fire and resolve and the impossibly steady conviction of someone who had stopped apologising for wanting.

When she did finally drew back, it was barely a breath, her forehead resting against his chin.

“You…” she said softly, refusing to retreat from his space, “asked for the truth.”

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[Dominic Praxon]

In the heat of the moment, instinct betrayed him. Yes, his hands rose upwards. Yes, there was heat, desperate and unguarded. Yes, her name broke from him in a sound he did not recognise. But no, he did not kiss her back.

Dominic froze, breath catching. His hands, instead of pulling her closer, gripped her shoulders and pushed her away, not violently, but with the startled force of a man drowning. He stumbled back from her lips as though scalded.

“Bastila…” Barely a breathing. Barely a voice at all.

He turned sharply away, one hand covering his mouth, chest rising too quickly. When he stepped out of the alcove and saw the faint movement of others in the gardens...gods, even the possibility of being seen...he recoiled, retreating instantly back into the shadows with her.

His back hit the wall. His hands rose into his hair.

“I said no…” A whisper. He said it again. Again. Cracking each time, softer and more desperate. “I said no, Bastila…I said no…”

A tremor pulled through him. Anger, shame, want, fear. All of it tangled so tightly he could barely breathe. His jaw clenched, his shoulders rigid, his breath trembling with the beginnings of fury...

But then he looked at her.

And every ounce of anger died.

The sight of her, lips parted, eyes still bright with the courage that had brought her to him, stole whatever righteous indignation he had tried to summon. He pressed his fist against his brow, unable to maintain the wall he had tried to rebuild.

“How…how am I supposed to make you understand?” It wasn’t shouted. It wasn’t bitten out. It was whispered like a confession he hated himself for giving.

His hand slid down his face, covering his mouth again as if the truth might escape him. His breath shook.

“This…the two of us…it can’t happen.” No accusation. No cruelty. Just raw certainty.

He shook his head again, voice barely audible. “Bastila, you don’t know what this would cost. You don’t know what I would become.”

His eyes squeezed shut. His voice thinned. “You think I don’t want...” The word died in his throat.

He pressed both hands to his face, breath trembling between his fingers. “…I am not yours.” He said in a pained whisper. “I am not even allowed to be my own.”

The sound of footsteps somewhere beyond the alcove made his shoulders tense. He muffled a groan into his palms, overwhelmed.

For a moment, time stopped. Then he looked up at her. Slowly. Softly. Completely lost.

“Bastila… I’m…” The apology trembled there...unfinished, more honest than he had ever been.

Bastila Sal-Soren​

 

[Bastila Sal-Soren]

Bastila stood frozen.
Not because she was confused. She wasn’t ashamed either; she did not doubt what she felt. No, she froze because something inside her; something tender, something young and innocent, that had dared to hope, it broke.

It did not shatter loudly. That small hope, the entity that liked to talk to her mind in moments of hope and daring; it cracked like ice under a single misplaced step. Fractured by a single, defining moment.

Her lips parted, but no breath came. Air abandoning her in her sudden moment of need.
Her eyes darkened, not with the tears as they had so many times before, but with a pain so sharp and dark that its only refuge was a place she had been forbidden from reaching into.

He whispered I said no, again and again, something in her gaze hardened, it was an effect that came from deep within her, from behind all the guards and walls she had ever placed.

When he said I am not yours; she flinched.
When he said I am not even allowed to be my own; she stopped flinching and she started to burn.

He hid behind his hands, a place she was fast realising was his only refuge, his escape from realities around him. As he hid, she found her voice and when it came it was not the gentle Bastila who he had kissed in the garden’s on Naboo, it wasn’t the teasing Bastila who had laughed and joked with him while Fathier’s raced behind them and it most certainly wasn’t the calm Bastila who had saved him from the attack on the senate.

No this Bastila was cold. This Bastila was from somewhere else. This Bastila was the very thing she was whisked away to destroy and hide. This…was the Bastila her father had built.

“Pathetic.”

The word landed like a stone dropped into still water. There was no echo, just resounding impact of the word.

He would feel it and she would not soften.

“You,” she said, stepping closer, eyes locked to his with blistering clarity. “Are pathetic.”

Her jaw clenched, her voice low and steady with the fury of an entity finally done with being hidden away.

“You call me a child yet you stand there wringing your hands like a frightened one,” she went on, each word a blade she no longer cared to blunt, “terrified of consequences you haven’t even faced. Terrified of people who are not here. Terrified of whispers, of optics, of ghosts of your own making.”

She shook her head, disgust and heartbreak knotted together.

“You talk about cost? About what this would make you? Dominic, the only thing you’ve become in this moment…”
Her voice cracked, not with weakness, but there was a change of tone that implied she was fighting with herself to say the words. Like she was terrified of what was coming out of her mouth but saying it anyway.
“...is a man so weak you can’t choose anything for himself.”

She didn’t stop, inside the heat was swelling, pouring like a lava flow over every single mental defence she had been shown to put up, ignoring her inner pleading to calm down, aggressively pushing her forward to say more, to inflict more damage.

“You want to lecture me about paths?” she demanded. “You want to say this is impossible because someone, somewhere, might disapprove?” Her eyes blazed as if on fire beneath. “Or is it just easier to hurt me then it is your precious image?”

A trembling breath escaped her; the sound was that of anger welded to heartbreak. If he listened closely he would hear the cracking of her own self.

“I am a Jedi,” she said, her voice lowering. “I am not some naive little noble girl, I have sacrificed more than any of those pampered princesses would even dream.” Her hands curled into fists. “But you...you dare to tell me that…”

Footsteps in the distance. She couldn’t be seen like this, not because it was unsightly for a padawan to be arguing with a senator but because her mind was not right, her soul was burning with rage and anger. That would be the question she would get asked, that would be the issue that was taken.

She stepped past him, then she stopped at the edge of the alcove. She didn’t turn, she was done offering him softness. Instead she gave him her voice; it was quiet, it was devastating, and it felt final.

“This was your last chance. If I walk away now,” she said, “you lose me. Forever.” Her head bowed once, a single, shaking breath trying to regain her composure, to put that screaming cracked entity back behind its walls. Then she straightened and opened her eyes.

“I will not look back, Dominic. You can become the man they want you to, while I forget the man you want to.” She didn’t wait for his reply. She walked out of the alcove with quick, angered steps, shoulders stiff, back straight, her poise barely holding together the pieces of her heart.

Bastila walked away.

Her boots struck the polished floor with the precision of a soldier on parade, but her breath was wrong; it was too tight, too thin. Her vision had tunnelled, the corridors were blurring into silver streaks, the hum of Lightspire fading behind the pounding in her ears.

She reached an empty meditation chamber and the door hissed shut behind her.

For one moment; one single and utterly fragile second, she simply stood there with her hand braced against the centre console, breath trembling. Then her knees buckled, not enough to fall but just enough to admit the truth the galaxy didn’t get to see;

She was broken, his words finally shattered her across the stars.

Her fist slammed against the panel with a jab that caused near instant bruising along the inside of her hand. Behind her the door locked. She was alone yet it felt like there was someone else there, just to her side, overlooking her like a judgemental sceptre.

She took another breath, it came out as a single, trembling exhale. Then it spoke.

You are worth more than him. You are worth more then any of them. Remember what I said my child. BURN THEM ALL

Then she ignited her lightsaber and the violet blade roared to life, flooding the room with violent colour. She hadn’t even realised she was holding it, yet here it was and Bastila…

…Bastila stopped holding back.

The first swing cleaved through the meditation table in a shower of sparks.
A second slash split the wall paneling, circuitry shrieking as it burst open.
A third carved deep into the floor, the vibration rattling her bones.

Her breath came hard, ragged, broken, tears rolled from her face, flooding her cheeks and her mouth with the evidence of her despair.

She struck again. And again. And again.

Each swing was a wordless cry, a sound that lived only in the Force, never leaving her lips. The cry of a shattered pledge of hope that had been crushed and shattered.

The console exploded under a downward arc.
Fragments of plastoid scattered, skittering across the durasteel floor like fleeing insects. A wall-mounted holoprojector tore free as her mind ripped it and crushed it in a smoking heap. She turned on the far table and cut it in half with a savage sweep that sent pieces tumbling.

Her shoulders shook.
Her teeth clenched.
Her heart; her heart felt like it had been torn out and stuffed back in wrong.

Good, show them you are worth more.

“SHUT UP!” She screamed at the sceptre wearing her father’s face, she turned on him and stabbed her saber into him, yet he was not there instead it slid into the sealed door, the metal screaming, glowing white-hot around the blade.

And for a moment she just… leaned there.

Her forehead pressed to her own wrist, arms trembling with the weight of what she was finally, violently letting herself feel.

Her voice finally escaped the anger, a hoarse whisper cracked open from somewhere deep.

“…why…”

She tasted the tears on her lips, the fearful shattered soul hiding away in a corner as the anger and the hatred and the dark consumed all around it.

“…why would you…”

Her breath hitched, breaking like glass.

The hum of her saber faltered as her grip slipped, and she caught it at the last moment, lowering it to her side.

The room around her was unrecognizable, it was scorched, broken, torn apart the way her heart felt inside her chest.

The Lightspire hummed softly in the silence.

She wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist in a quick, furious gesture, as though even tears were a humiliation she refused to permit.

Then, with a trembling breath, she extinguished the blade.

silence.

The darkness closed in around her.

Her knees nearly gave out again, but this time she slid down and cowered into the corner of the room, like a small child who had no other choice.

B U R N
T H E M
A L L

OUTFIT: XoXo | TAG: Dominic Praxon EQUIPMENT:

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[Dominic Praxon]

Dominic grew pale. His stomach churned. And he felt immediately nauseous.

Her words hit like the scorpion's sting. Each one tore into wounds that were always, to him, fresh and open.

Pathetic. He agreed.

Useless. A waste of breath. Not good enough for her. Not good enough to please those he most longed to impress.

Dominc Praxon was a man with an impotent soul. The only thing that gave him a sense of spiritual vitality was success in the political realm. And she said she loved him. But she didn't even know what he was pathetic.

She couldn't hear it. She wouldn't hear it.

Heat rose in his cheeks as she walked away, declaring that if she did, he would lose her forever.

He turned and yelled at her. "I won't be chasing you!" He felt immediate shame, as all he saw was the closed doors of the lift she had just entered...and a half dozen people staring back at him.

His jaw clenched. His posture straightened. And he turned towards the elevator at the opposite end of the room.

He left the alcove, and with it...any love he had once had for Bastila Sal-Soren. That is what he told himself.

Bastila Sal-Soren​