Private Legacies

[Tydeus of Tion]

The boy frowned. "That makes sense. Explains why what you described was more of a vignette. You're far more practiced." The gray eyes flashed. "For now. Ask me again in two months and we will see."

He opened his hand in a dismissive shrug. "You, Bernard, Kyric. Other Jedi i've met. Always so surprised that I spend so long training." He was faced with an impossible task: kill the unkillable. Once already he had failed, no doubt there would be more. He would continue to try. Even from the grave.

"What else would I do?" Unspoken in those words was the implication. Tydeus did not have a life outside of his mission, his continued purpose for existence. "Would that I could live as a fisherman or farmer. A simple - if hard - life, honest and true. That is a distant dream. It is not my destiny. And so I train."

Tydeus eyed her. "Does the small art require delving into memories? On a cellular level?"

Tansu Treicolt

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

"Alright, it's a date. See you in two months and all the memories you've accumulated from now to then." She stuck out her hand to shake. Just shake. No palm readings.

Kyric! He knew cousin Kyric!

"From one extreme to the next." Tansu shook her head when he leap frogged from warrior to farmer. "I ain't a life coach, and I ain't gonna tell you what works and what doesn't, how am I to know?

All i said was you were very focused. From what I saw, and what you've said since we met, your goals are clear. If what you're doing is working for you, who cares what I or they think?"

It just sounded awfully lonely. And that sentiment made it difficult for Tansu to reconcile as a proper way to live. Alone was the word she feared most. The youngest from a family of five, born to a companion and mirror image, she thrived in constant company — so of course Tydeus' life choices made her flinch. She could never make the decisions he did. Isolation was her worst nightmare.


"You got it." Tansu lied, keeping her expression as sagely as possible. To further her phoney impression of a great teacher she continued with syntax she'd read once under Master Pryce's guide: "To the point of dissecting how a memory resilient enough to be recalled is built, so one can understand those which affect them."

Smiling pleasantly, she rest her hands on her knees and rolled her shoulders once.

"Shall we begin?"

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Tydeus of Tion
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​

 

[Tydeus of Tion]

A snort at her quip, then a shake of the hand - against his better judgment lest she should probe his memories once more. She jested, but he was quite serious. With a focused mind, relentless drive, and untrammeled time, one could achieve any number of goals.

What she said about not caring what others thought, true enough if one had a family to lean on. Tydeus knew himself well enough to know why. Knew that the loneliness of his path caused him to dwell overlong on those near enough to perhaps be friends. Knew too that he only did so to find reason to push them away.

A sword did not have kith or kin. A sword had only its purpose: to kill.

Hard eyes, hard as iron - and brittle as it too - watched her. A bead of sweat trickled down his brow and he blinked it away. He was already concentrating so hard on suppressing the Wound. But he would push through. He always did.

"Hmm... very well. Yes." He had merely been theorizing and did not quite understand the slew of words she recited, as if from memory. He learned by doing. Deeds, not words. "You've done this before?"

Tansu Treicolt

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

"Yeah I have, back home, helped my mama with makin' some of the no-good soils good again. I try 'n use it for healin' too when the time calls for it, but it's a little trickier. The human body's a complex thing."

So ready to go, he didn't even clock her completely false description of Art of the Small. Of course he didn't; how could he? He didn't know how it worked. It was a good reminder that Tydeus had hunted her down for one purpose.

"I was only teasin'." She pat his knee reassuringly, giving him a quick once over. He looked almost uncomfortable, back to the restaurant. But they'd come so — oh right. Her mind traced back to what he'd said about the deaths, and his work suppressing the wound that was his Force presence.

"Ackshully," she started, and pushed herself up to stand "You take a minute or two to let loose. Take up some space while I grab something that'll help our lesson out."

With an ambiguous gesture that seemed like a plea to wait, she moved from her mat and scuttled to an unseen place just beyond the sparring chamber.

Beyond sight, Tansu rummaged through the meek set up of a kitchen. It had the basics and the basics only. Everything canned and nowhere near delicious looking. But she took her time. She'd seen the effort salted on Tydeus' brow, and he'd need to be uncoiled for Art of the Small to work. Especially for his first time.

Taking herself out of his presence also gave her a moment's reprieve. It was subtle, because he'd done a good job dampening his impact, but she felt a flush of vitality course through her. And with that breath of strength, the slow-dawning realization of what she had signed up to do.

Become an accessory of murder.

She'd be naive to think it anything else. And preachy to ask him to make it something else. And she didn't want to be either.

The question remained: Which was the lesser of two evils? This boy had committed his life to one cause. She couldn't deny him a tool that could be helpful. With the way he was, the best she could do was help him, not deny or deviate him.

Finally, she found what she was looking for. Two water containers.

Back on the mats, she folded her legs again and handed him the bottle of water.

"For you, but don't finish it just yet. It'll be somethin' you work with when we get started.

I think you'll be good at this, given yer familiarity with suppressing your presence. I'm not sure how this is gonna go, because it's sort of an all-in kinda power." She bit her lip, considering how to best explain this and where to start.

"It started as a power for cloaking oneself entirely. Shrinking your whole self down to the size of a teeny tiny atom. Once you're down there, you can stay itty bitty and call it a day, or, the more hella advanced, like my Grandmama and mama, start to rework the molecules around them. Changing from one thing to the next."

She tapped his water bottle. "Like altering the states of stuff from liquid, to solid, to gas. Or boilin'.." she couldn't stomach saying blood "..water."

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Tydeus of Tion
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[Tydeus of Tion]

Tydeus looked at the water container, dubious. He would not say he was good at suppressing his presence as no matter how hard he tried, he could not fully dissolve the Wound in the Force. Only dampen it slightly. Still, he was familiar with the basic principle.

When she finished talking, he nodded once.

"Shrink your presence, but really your mental focus, to an atomic level. Rework molecular structures. In this case, boil the water through convection, as opposed to conduction or radiation."

He knew that there were techniques to heat objects using a focus on conduction, or altering the light waves to cause heat via radiation. Tydeus had experimented with some of these powers, in particular the Disciples of Twilgiht.

"There's a Force sect from Dyspeth, they focus on warping light waves. I've been trying to focus those waves, concentrate them into an irradiating ray. Like a solar flare in miniature. But this Art of the Small seems far more advanced."

Gray eyes looked from the water bottle to Tansu.

"The amount of focus to alter things on a molecular level in the heat of battle... Your grandmother was incredibly skilled."

Tansu Treicolt

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

He seemed to know so much. Had such rich experiences from other cultures.

"Maybe you could show me that later." She wiggled her fingers, suggesting she take the information from memories rather than a full lesson.

"Yeah." A corner of her mouth ticked up, and she sounded distantly dreamlike.

​

Kiskla and her mother had never been close, and anytime Loske spoke of her grandmama it was always a little strained. The girls hadn't been deeply curious about their histories, or their family tree, too focused on what trouble they could get into next — but if she took even fifteen seconds to reflect on it, the impact of her bloodline within the galaxy was not something forgotten.

She didn't want to be like Kyric, who wore his bloodline's burden like a brand, but it was something she shouldn't forget about either. Insofar as trusting herself to be more than just capable.

"Alright, we can fangirl after, let's get some headway while the sun's still up hm?" She flinched. "Not that there's any real sun on Denon."

Her posture loosened and she sat still, closing her eyes and hoping he'd do the same.

"Let's start with drawin' ourselves in. Like a big 'ol house gettin' ready to brace against the storm. All the lights are off, doors're' slammed shut, and we're goin' underground to the basement." Was that a good analogy? She'd never taught anything before. And she couldn't remember what her mother had said.

She exhaled through her nose, and then inhaled, and followed her own advice. Peeling her awareness back from everything that stimulated her, and in, in, in. It felt like a gentle collapse, like an expert atrisian folding paper into a delicate, tiny, interwoven shape. Eliminating margins of space and filling each with more of herself.

At the smallest point, she exhaled, and stretched her awareness out beyond herself. Prodding that which she did not recognize. It would have had to be Tydeus. She could sense him, sense the structure to him, layers interpenetrating like shadows casting shadows, throbbing, tidal, deep and painful.

A stark contrast to the way her metaphysical appeared, she could understand that much.

Once more, she stretched out, amplifying her thoughts to resonate in the patterns of his shape.

Find the spaces between atoms. That's where the Force lives when it's got nowhere big to be. You see it yet?

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Tydeus of Tion
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[Tydeus of Tion]

He smiled weakly at her joke, inwardly panicking about what she might see if she did indeed seek out his memories again.

Fine. He would just seek to avoid skin-to-skin contact with this girl, since that's how she absorbed them. Or, at the very least, he would need to keep his mind guarded should they spar again. What a dangerous power.

Tydeus tried to follow her instructions, closing his eyes and falling deep into a meditative breathing routine. Lights off. Doors shut. Going underground.

He had always striven to make himself harder, faster, stronger, taller. Better. Better than any Jedi. Better than Kaine. Now... he needed to make himself small. Small as an atom.

A presence swept across his mind. Summer wind, fields of wild wheat golden in the sunlight. Tansu. She spoke into his mind.

He concentrated, focusing, drawing on all of his training to find the Force. Yes, it was all around him, permeating everything. But where did it live? He went looking for it, driving deeper and deeper. Smaller and smaller. His head throbbed.

"I see it."

Tansu Treicolt

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

Absolute giddiness bled into her existence and bloomed out, joyful at his affirmation. He saw it! She knew he would. She shimmered a version of woohoo his way.

Did that mean her instructions had been clear? She'd have to keep note of that analogy, since it had seemed to work enough for him to grasp and instantly succeed with.

Try'n do somethin' with it. Anythin. Turn it over. Feel it. Shimmy on over to where you sense the water down here. Give it a poke or prod and see how it responds before you do any changin' or messin' with it.

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Tydeus of Tion
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[Tydeus of Tion]

He started to. He did. His attention pivoting, as though a turning telescope gazing up at the stars. But he passed over something he should not have.

"What."

The boy looked closer, concetrating. He, of course, was looking at himself - his own presence. And within that, a vortex. At first it appeared as merely a dark fuzz in his mental eye, lit by something though he did not know what. The closer he peered, the more it drew him in. As it did, the vortex crystalized. It became an amorphous hole of energy in the Force, an impenetrable cimmerian core that drank in all of the light around it. About this core pulsed a thousand, thousand voices. Millions of them, their presences humming. Echoes of what once was, what had been.

"No."

He tried to pull away, but found he could not.

The Wound in the Force grew, encompassing his presence with a power as inevitable as gravity. The echoes of loss tore through him and he felt it ring him to his core. Again he felt the emptiness, the loneliness, the barren wasteland of ash and pain and misery. In this place between places, the Wound's event horizon began to siphon off energy from Tansu Treicolt . Tydeus recognized the effect at once, remembering how Meliant had tried to drain the Force from him. Only this was far worse.

The Wound sought to consume her, to feed upon her essence in the Force. And he did not know how to stop it.

"Tansu!"

Tansu Treicolt

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

It started as a tug.

Just Small. Subtle. Like the storm she'd spoken about had only manifested as a breeze. Tansu stiffened, but didn't yet panic. Her awareness remained low, still molecular, still in the current, still watching his. And when it got closer, she didn't suspect anything; just thought maybe he was lost, strayed from the water.

Then something scraped across her sense, all wrong and jagged. A cold hunger without teeth or shape, only pressure. And when she instinctively reached toward the pull, just to see what it was, she felt it.

And it felt her back.

Tansu had only ever experienced the Force as breath, motion, rhythm something living. But this wasn't alive. This was rot.

Black dread seeped through her, answering her instinct with gravity. Heavy, pulling, and overwhelming. Her breath hitched.

No—no, no, no she flinched, fingers curling tight into fists as if that might anchor her. But there was nothing to grab on to.

And it reached deeper than the initial scrape at the surface of her mind. It went for the soft, unseen parts, the parts made of light, of laughter, of the warmth she carried into every room—and it snuffed them. No smoke, no sound. Just gone.

"Wh—" Her mouth formed a word she didn't get to say. Fear rose up in her throat. She could feel the light dimming inside her.

And it was the scariest thing she'd ever felt.

Stop! she gasped, barely able to speak. Her voice was hoarse, frayed with panic. You have to stop, please stop.

She didn't know what to do.

The Force had never felt like this. Never cold, never greedy. It had always been a current to ride, but this, this was like a riptide dragging her under, fully intending to make her drown. It clawed at her light, peeled it back, and devoured it piece by piece. The world around her dimmed. There was no floor, no ceiling, no horizon, only that gravity and black dread and she had nowhere to pull back to. Her safety slipped away as the wound closed around her, swelling like a bruise.

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Tydeus of Tion
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[Tydeus of Tion]

Power flooded into him and he felt strength unequaled. As if he could reach out his mind and at a thought collapse the building, or punch through beskar. He brimmed with it, until it permeated every fiber of his being. So much power in the Force that he felt he might explode. And all of it, coming from her, ripped from her as a tsunami drags out the tides from the shoreline.

A hunger crawled into him then, an enjoyment for the hideous might from which he supped, even at so terrible a price. She began to grow cold. He could feel it. Draining her dry.

"No."

All she had done since they'd met was try to help him, despite her every misgiving. And this was the price for her aid, him ripping out her very life force?

Horrified, Tydeus battled with the Wound, pulling against the siphons that drank up her strength with every ounce of will he could muster. Sweat poured from his brow and matted his hair to his head as he clenched his eyes shut, pushing through this nightmare.

An echo drifted to the surface. One which he still saw in his dreams.

He cradled the body of his sister in his arms, her body blackened by fires beyond recognition, her skin crumbling to his touch. The boy rocked back and forth upon the boarding ramp of the family shuttle, clutching her body and sobbing, his voice raw and ragged. Overhead, obliterated satellites and orbital stations fell like smoldering tear streaks across the skies. The three moons of Tion hung like great glowing eyes, refineries and industrial complexes incandescent with the flames of their ruin. All this wealth and splendor, in a moment, all utterly ended.

If he did not stop the wound, Tansu's corpse would be the next body he cradled.

I. WILL. NOT.

The Force tremored with the strength of his will, of his single-minded purpose. The Wound gaped at him, a yawning black hole, infinite and terrible.

You are just the Echo. Thought the boy as sweat trickled down his face, and his whole body shook with the effort of his concentration. I am Tion's son. I am the heir of this agony.

And I will NOT LET

ANOTHER
​

SUFFER IT
​

Reality tore. The siphons wrenched free from Tansu, dissipating, and Tydeus slumped sideways onto the mat, eyes blinking open, sweat stinging his eyes.

Tansu Treicolt

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

This small, this deep, this entangled, Tansu felt everything Tydeus fought. Heard each declaration of absolute denial. Every shudder, every pull, every jagged twist of the Wound's hunger, the way it slammed, wrestled, took, wrung, rot. Such rot. Death, ash, all-consuming. And it was all part of him.

​

Her body jerked when he ripped the first tendril away. It was like losing a piece of herself. Like sinew from bone. And it hurt all the same. Her skin prickled with heat, then went cold, a dangerous cold that hummed the truth of how close the darkness had gotten.

It was all so much, too much, and the understanding that it was all him wrestling with a storm inside overwhelmed her. She felt the strain of it in her own teeth, in the cords of her neck. Each ragged swell he took of breath rattled through her ribs as if they shared the same chest. Every ounce of him was bent toward keeping her from the abyss, she felt that, understood that, and every ounce of her knew that if she could, she'd do anything in her power to keep him from this feeling ever again. It was too much. Too much for one person.

And then..

Tion's son triumphed.

Tendrils tore free with wretched violence. Tansu gasped at sudden, sharp absence. The Wound's hunger recoiled, retreating into whatever pit had birthed it.

The tether between them slackened, but the echo of his fight—of his grief—still beat against her ribs. One hand pressed to the mat and the other to her chest, numbly trying to hold in pieces that felt like they'd been dragged half into him and back again. Trembling with aftershock, with not even enough breath to make her vocal chord buzz, she moved her lips noiselessly.

"A—" gasp, in, out, she felt boneless, "—are you—" and so dizzy and dropped to an elbow. Every muscle begged her to give in completely, surrender, fall back onto her back, but if she did, would she get up?

"Are you okay?" Only a breathless whisper, hoarse, and then she collapsed entirely.

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Tydeus of Tion
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[Tydeus of Tion]

The boy pushed himself back up to kneeling, power humming through his veins. Sweat mattered strands of hair to his forehead and eyes, he brushed them away with the back of his hand. Eyes of cold iron found Tansu, slumped upon the mat.

He slid over to her, reactions almost instinctual, built in by training. Heedless of his unspoken fear of her siphoning away memories from mere touch, his fingers found her neck and he felt her pulse, thready, but still alive. Although the Force would tell him this too, he did not wish to immerse himself in it. Not yet. Not so soon after nearly killing her. Relief washed over him. Then guilt.

"Tansu," he said, then gritting his teeth together so hard his jaw hurt. He shook her shoulder gently. "I'm fine," he said flatly, "And you're not dead, but that was too close. We should get you connected to the biomonitors." And make sure there were not lingering effects.

Damn it.

She was right to fear him. They all were. Despite everything that had just happened, he couldn't help but feel a fascination with the Wound, thoughts churning over and over as he recontextualized it. Not just a loadstone around his neck, but a weapon he might be able to harness and use. It felt so fitting, the idea of it: killing Kaine with Tion's own Echo.

Tansu Treicolt

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

She felt the shake, heard the words, but only managed a low groan. She wasn't dead. Least, she didn't think she was. But she felt wrung-out, hollowed from the inside, like something had scooped her out and left her skin behind. Her thoughts came in flashes, broken frames blinking in and out, whole stretches of memory swallowed in the dark.

And tired. Stars, she was so tired — an otherworldly level of exhaustion she'd never felt before and would have scared her if she was conscious enough to be afraid.

"Bio—?" The word was too big, chunky blocks of letters in her mouth and she wanted only to reject the whole idea of fussing over her.

Slowly, she tried to sit up. Everything rushed to her head and she felt the bad kind of woozy, barely making it to rest on her elbows. Her eyes squeezed shut and she made another pathetic sound erring to the world of whimpers.

"That was not now that was supposeduh go." She whispered, twisting into her hand to press into the space between her eyes.

"Was that you? That's what's inside you all the time?"

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Tydeus of Tion
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[Tydeus of Tion]

"Always," he grit out, even now feeling the well of emptiness within him, followed on by a hunger that had not been there before. A ravenous need to fill that void with the lives of others.

Muscles in his jaw tightened. As if bearing the echoes of all his lost kin were not bad enough, now this Wound urged him toward actions far worse. There would truly be no measure of peace for him. Not in this life.

Not until he'd done what he set out to do.

He had not known it could this. Drain her life force away and leave her nearly dead and gasping. He went to rest a hand on her back as she let out another pathetic noise, paused - hand hovering - then placed it on her back anywayl. Tydeus intended it to be reassuring. But he had also only intended to learn from her.

And now this. More pain. More suffering.

It follows in my wake.

"It is the Wound. Millions of people died on Tion. My people, my family. I survived. Their deaths left an imprint on me, tore a hole in the Force. And... I think we've woken it up."

Tansu Treicolt

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

Was she nauseous?

Tansu pressed her fingers firmer into the space between her eyebrows as if she might uncover a reset button beneath her skin.

"We woke it up?" Her voice cracked and she meant to slump back onto the ground, and started to, but felt kept in place by his hand. Instead she buried her face entirely in her hands and cursed her palms.

"Fethin' kark I am so sorry."

But he'd said he was fine. And de seemed so much better off than her. She realized then, that all her energy gone had siphoned away to him. That evil encounter had been that which hungered within his Force presence.

His family. His home. He'd described it as an echo, and now it was something active and loud. Stealing from people to feed itself. What did its hunger feel like? Had she unintentionally made his life worse when he'd only come to her for help?

"I am so sorry I didn't mean to." Her hands slid away from her face and she twisted, slow, awkward, and put her hand over Tydeus', giving a brief squeeze.

That was all it took.

Maybe because they'd been so tightly intermingled on a microscopic level, with shared fragments woven in a vast intimacy, that memories leapt from his skin to hers. She hadn't even asked for it. It was as non-consensual for her as it was for him.

Tansu meant to pull her hand away the second the sensation felt wrong, but felt a vicelike grip keep her stayed.

"No, please." Did she even manage to speak that out loud, or only protest with her thoughts?

Whichever the case, it was ignored.

WHERE'S MOM — ANTHONY! MY SON — A crush of voices smashed into her mind all at once, shattering any sense of self she had left. Each scream was a body in her chest, a set of lungs she couldn't fill, a heartbeat that stuttered and stopped in her ears. Names, fragments of prayers, frantic calls over comms — IT'S TOO HOT, TOO HOT, GET OUT, GET OUT — all stacking until there was no breath or air between one sentence to the next. Don't let go—I'm almost home—The hatch won't seal—Keep breathing, just keep breathing—MOVE!!—Don't be scared, it's just—I LOVE YOU!!

Her pulse thundered so loud it blurred the words all together. Heat bloomed under her skin, wrong and suffocating. The stink of burning hair. The taste of copper flooding her mouth. Somewhere, someone's hand was in hers, but it wasn't Tydeus'. It was slick, trembling, then gone, turned to ash.

The memories weren't linear, they were concussive, senseless, with no silence in between. And before she could brace for one, the next slammed into her: a mother's sob, a pilot's guttural curse as his ship spiralled, the last brittle exhale of someone alone in the dark.

All she could manage was a strangled sound, her hand tightening reflexively on his as though that was the only thing keeping her from being pulled into the void with them. It was the exact opposite of what she should have done but everyone she felt tried so hard to hold on that she couldn't will her body to just let go, to back off, to get away from him. And the part of her that had the sense that she should was drowning in the pile of gathering ash.

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Tydeus of Tion
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[Tydeus of Tion]

In those wide, blue yonder eyes he saw reflected the satellites burning through atmosphere like fiery tears. Moons on fire. Turbolasers saturating the planet's crust with battery after battery of strikes, cooking the very air and turning the dirt and sand to glass. Memories that should not belong to her. Not her burden to bear, her screams to hear, her sorrow to hold.

A hot wind stole across the ashen waste of his heart. The boy's face trembled. Even iron bends to heat.

A strangled sound came from her lips. Her fingers tightened. Tydeus snapped.

His features split in a snarl and he seized her wrist with his other hand, tore her grip free, then shoved her away.

"What have you done."

This was not her fault. But hadn't she wanted to know? Hadn't she kept asking him what it was like? Joking about stealing his memories? He controlled his breathing, centered himself. He looked on her, eyes dark as storm clouds.

A finger jabbed in her direction, as pointed as a spear.

"You wanted to know what it's like to be me? Well, now you know."

She shouldn't have to bear this weight. This was his to shoulder, to carry.

Tydeus' anger cooled swiftly as he looked on her, practically insensate with everything she'd just experienced.

Conquer others and you are strong. Conquer thyself and you are invincible.

One of the monk's old sayings. Tydeus grit his teeth. He wasn't angry with her, he realized. He was furious with himself, for coming here at all, for asking her to get involved, for continuing on when he realized her hands were not blood-stained like his.

"This is all my fault. I shouldn't have come here."

Twice now he'd hurt her, just by his mere presence. Tydeus sank to his knees on the mat, feeling defeated. Unable to even reach out to help her for fear of contact.

Tansu Treicolt

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

Thankfully Tydeus had his wits about him, and severed her grip around his hand. Even with the separation, her mind reeled, confused, trapped between the present and elsewhere. She could still smell the glassed dirt, taste the iron tang of blood in the air, feel the vibration of collapsing towers through her bones. Voices screamed in a hundred dialects, dying in a hundred ways.

Breath came in shallow, broken stutters.

"I didn't—"—but the rest dissolved into silence. Her knees drew closer to keep herself more tightly bound, partly to evidence that she meant not to touch or steal from him, but also to keep everything that threatened to unfurl from doing so.

"I didn't mean to. I didn't want—" The words crumbled in her mouth. She pressed her palm harder into the mat, anchoring herself to something that wasn't burning. She looked at him then, just for a second. There was no challenge in it, no cowboy spark, just someone scraped raw from the inside out. The way he said now you know landed like a blow, but she didn't argue. Because she did know. And she wished she didn't.

Her gaze drifted away again, unfocused, trying to shut out the roar of a thousand dying worlds.

When his voice cut in again, proclaiming his fault, her eyes snapped back to him, startled out of the spiral for just a heartbeat. He was on his knees, a picture of defeat, and for all her exhaustion something in her ached to bridge the space between them. But the thought of touching him, of what might leap across their skin again, kept her rooted in place. Her mouth opened, then closed.

"Don't say that. It ain't. You were tryin' to learn and ended up.. teachin'." She felt beyond exhausted. Were all those voices gnattering at him now? Could he hear them? And if he did, he still withstood. He didn't crumble or shrivel or whimper, he grit and bore it, hardened himself to withstand it and turn it into something that could find revenge for all those souls.

"I don't.." she closed her eyes. "I don't know where to go from here, though. I can't..we can't try that again." She didn't want to condemn him to solitude, and recommend that any further exploration of the technique be done solo, so she...just stayed uncharacteristically quiet.

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Tydeus of Tion
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[Tydeus of Tion]

He avoided her gaze, studying the ground as he marshaled his thoughts - and his emotions. He didn't have time to feel sorry for himself, to wallow in it, nor to worry over this girl who had surely waded in over her head. Pick yourself up. Keep moving forward.

The boy grit his teeth, but nodded his head slowly.

"You're right." Tydeus got to a knee, "we can't."

Rising to his feet, the boy moved over to what looked like a cooler of some sort and opened it. Sure enough, there were hydropacks inside. He pulled one out and tossed it to her, then moved over to where he had placed his affects and started to don them all again as he spoke. "I need to go. I can't hold this back anymore than I already am. It's eating you alive, I can feel it. I'm sorry, for everything. But you have helped."

Heh. The third time he'd apologized to her since meeting her. Only this time, he had something to be truly sorry for... He would have offered to help her up, but he had done enough damage today. Doing so would probably just blast her full of nightmares or fling her into the netherrealm for all he knew. Psychometry. It seemed innocuous enough, but with her powers?

Mental note: start carrying gloves.

Tydeus slid the poncho over his head and pushed back sweat-slick hair with an arm.

"I'll go to Coruscant. I'll find your grandmother's holocron. And when I do, I'll let you know," he reached into his utility belt and pulled out a commlink, paused to consider what she might learn from it with a mere touch, then tossed it to her, "If you ever need my help, just give me a call. I owe you one," slate gray eyes looked her up and down, "Are you going to be alright?"

Tansu Treicolt

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

It was wise to end things here. Wise but somehow felt wrong. Unfinished.

But what could she do to complete the task they'd set out to accomplish together? He was trying to keep that horrible monster she'd felt at bay, and she was nothing but tantalizing to it now. She watched him move, still feeling drained. Her hand snapped up reflexively to catch the pack he tossed and she gave it a once over as he began to dress. Why did she feel like such a failure right now? She'd done what she could, she'd even felt the trill of delight when he'd initially succeeded at the atomic level of The Force!

Her thumbs pressed the pack until it threatened to burst and she pushed herself up to stand. At least getting off her knees would make her feel less small and pathetic.

Hopefully he'd take what he learned today and get further with the holocron than if she'd simply given him that instruction and seen him off.

"I'll be fine." She'd expected to send him off with a hug and a jest, a reminder to see him in two months and share memories as they'd shaken on earlier — but now that seemed absolutely wrong.

Didn't it?

"I hope you find what you need in that holocron."

She took a few steps forward, walking him out to the edge of the training room still in her bare feet — she'd let him leave the rest of the enclave on his own, so he didn't feel she was stalking him or anything.

"I'm glad I metcha Tydeus. Even if things went real south in the end. And I hope I see you again." She tilted her head to the side, small smile persevering through the fatigue. "Just maybe not for the memory swap we shook on earlier."

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Tydeus of Tion
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