Private Licking Wounds

[Alana Calloway]

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Licking Wounds​

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Location: Harbinger, Medical Ship​

Tag: Tamsin Graves​

Gear: Medical Gown​

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The Sith medical ship Harbinger drifted through the void, its crimson lights pulsing against the abyss. Inside, the air was thick with the sterile scent of antiseptics, tinged with the faint copper bite of blood. Alana Calloway moved through the ship's winding corridors with slow, deliberate steps, her left arm bound tightly in a sling.

The pain was constant—a dull, throbbing reminder of what she had done to herself. She hadn't just pushed too far; she had destroyed her arm. The muscles, the ligaments, the tendons—shredded beyond anything a kolto bath or a med droid could easily mend. The Sith doctors had told her she might never regain full strength without cybernetics. They expected her to take the upgrade, to embrace the "stronger" path.

She wasn't ready for that. Not yet.

The halls were quiet, save for the hum of distant machinery and the occasional murmur of medics tending to the wounded. A medical droid chirped as she passed, its scanner sweeping over her with a flicker of green light. She ignored it. She wasn't about to let them poke and prod at her again.

She turned a corner and found herself in a viewing corridor, the vastness of space stretching beyond the transparisteel windows. Normally, she liked the silence, the endless black reminding her how little anything truly mattered. But tonight, it just made her feel small.

Because back on Woostri, she hadn't been herself.

Her hand curled into a trembling fist at her side. She had fought before, killed before. She had always been a survivor. But this time had been different. This time, she had lost something.

She had lost control.

She could still feel it, lingering like a phantom limb. That moment when her mind had slipped, when something else had seized the reins and driven her forward. She had wanted to stop. She had known she was pushing her body too far. But she hadn't been able to stop. The Dark Side had pulled her forward, past pain, past reason, past the limits of her own body—until her arm had simply given out, ruined beyond repair.

That thing…it had played a part.

It had felt good in the moment. Like she was unstoppable.

And then it was gone, leaving her broken and shaking in the aftermath.

She exhaled sharply, pressing her forehead against the cold transparisteel. She could hear the whispers in the halls, the glances from Sith troopers and officers. They knew what had happened down there. They weren't calling her a war hero, but they were watching. Waiting.

The Sith wanted their weapons sharp. They wanted their soldiers to push beyond their limits. To be ruthless. And she had done exactly that.

She had been exactly what they wanted her to be.

And for the first time in a long time, that thought scared her.

 

[Tamsin Graves]

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Theme: Spillways
Location: Harbinger, Medical Ship
Equipment: Medical Gown | Circlet of Projection
Tags: Alana Calloway

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The buzz of the lights above was the only sound in the room as Tamsin waited in her wheelchair outside the bacta tank for the nurse to come back into the room. She was lost to her thoughts about all that had transpired on Woostri, her sister Kaila Irons had come in to check on her a lot as she underwent treatment to mend her many cuts, bruises and broken ribs. Yet she hadn't said anything to her master yet about what had happened down there, she was still shaken up and needed a moment to process.

For most of it she had just been in the passenger seat of her own body, it was like a very vivid dream to her. It seemed real but also from her own point of view everything had been like viewing on a holo screen. Even as the doctors and nurses asked her what had happened, she couldn't really tell them even though she had felt the pain of a thousand cuts and broken ribs it had all been in her head.

She was trying to recall all she could as she sat there beneath the buzzing lights when the nurse finally came in and started to push her out of the room into the eerily quiet hallway. The nurse said something about taking her to get a bite to eat but Tamsin really wasn't paying attention lost to her own thoughts.

She just vacantly stared forward as she was being pushed down the hall, her dark eyes fixated on nothing at all as they rounded a corner. At the end of the hall they turned down, stood a woman from behind Tamsin couldn't tell who it was but they were staring out the view port vacantly. Yet as they got closer and she could make out the reflection in the glass, she realized it was the woman she had met at the Lady Velvet event.

Her name was Alana, Tamsin remembered but what was she doing here? Had she been on Woostri too? She noticed the woman's arm was in a sling, Tamsin glanced back at her nurse and whispered to her to pull her up by the view port. The wheelchair was pushed up alongside the taller blonde woman making Tamsin feel even shorter than she was. Tamsin took a moment to look out at the dark abyss of space out the view port.

"Were you on Woostri too?" Was all she asked in a meek voice not wanting to pry to hard, knowing the affects of war could trigger ptsd.

 

[Alana Calloway]

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Licking Wounds​

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Location: Harbinger, Medical Ship​

Tag: Tamsin Graves​

Gear: Medical Gown​

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Alana didn't move at first, her gaze fixed on the stars beyond the viewport, as if searching for something in the cold void. Her arm throbbed in its sling, a dull, persistent ache, but it was nothing compared to the weight in her chest.

She hadn't expected to see her here.

Tamsin.

For a moment, Alana considered lying. Saying she had been somewhere else. Somewhere far away from the blood and ruin of Woostri. But she was too damn tired for that. She had danced with her before, on Naboo was it? The memory was hazy, but the sensations, the feelings…that part was real.

That part she could remember.

Her head turned slightly, just enough to meet Tamsin's dark, distant eyes.

"Yeah," She admitted, voice low, rough around the edges. "I was there…funny enough I was….trying to protect you."

She could still feel the alien sensation of her body moving without her, the silent droning of static at the back of her mind as her body moved with unnatural intensity.

A muscle in her jaw tensed.

Her gaze flicked over Tamsin, the bandages, the way she sat so small in that chair, like she was still lost in whatever had happened down there. Alana didn't ask. She didn't press. Some wounds didn't need words to be understood.

Instead, she exhaled, slow and steady.

"Guess it didn't go so well for either of us, huh?” She muttered to herself, lowering down to nearly be equal with Tamsin. “…worse thing is, I didn’t feel in control through any of that….guess that’s just war.”
She said in a defeated tin, shifting her gaze back to the void beyond the viewport. “How are you feeling? I’m…sorry I did a poor job protecting you.”

She winced at the thought, but managed to look the woman in the eyes now. The shame of her failure wouldn’t be forgotten though.

“But it’s nice to see you, again.”
Not whatever that…other thing was.

Just Tamsin.

 

[Tamsin Graves]

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Theme: Spillways
Location: Harbinger, Medical Ship
Equipment: Medical Gown | Circlet of Projection
Tags: Alana Calloway

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"What?" Tamsin's head turned to the side, and she looked up at Alana all confused. Wait she was soldier, but something was off and different. "You were the soldier?"

She couldn't figure it out how didn't she notice it? There were a few things in the force Tamsin was good at Telekinesis and sensing people. The soldier had felt different to her than Alana. Was it like the demon in her only Kaila had ever been able to sense it when it was sleeping or pretending to be dormant.

Yet when Alana said she didn't feel in control of her body, Tamsin knew that feeling well. "What happened to me wasn't your fault." Tamsin knew it was the demon's fault; it cared nothing about the damage it did to this body so long it remained alive in the end. Tamsin could have been turned into a vegetable, and it would care as long as the husk could still breath.

"I am dark omen all those around me get hurt." Tamsin turned back to looking out into the abyss of space. Tamsin knew why everyone around her had bad luck, it was because of the thing inside of her. "You saw it then, the thing inside me?"

"I wouldn't doubt if she was what tried to control you." Tamsin didn't really have any other good explanation for how she hadn't known the soldier was Alana. She wasn't sure if there was anything she could say to alleviate loss of control of one's mind.

"It was nice seeing you again too, I should go before I hurt you anymore. I can't control what she will do or what she might make you do." She solemnly looked over her shoulder back at the nurse with a nod that she should go. Tamsin didn't want to hurt anyone with the thing inside of her and she couldn't stop it. It made her think of Susefvi and it telling her she was better off alone.


"I'm sorry for what I did to you down there. "

 

[Alana Calloway]

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Licking Wounds​

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Location: Harbinger, Medical Ship​

Tag: Tamsin Graves​

Gear: Medical Gown​

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Alana's grip tightened on the railing in front of her, the cool metal grounding her, keeping her present.

You were the soldier?

The words lingered, gnawed at her. She hadn't expected Tamsin to figure it out. Maybe some part of her had hoped she wouldn't. That the soldier—the thing she had become—was separate, something distant and unrecognizable. But here they were, standing in the wreckage of the same truth.

"You didn't do anything to me, Tamsin." Alana's voice was quiet, measured, but there was an edge beneath it. "I did this to myself...I have my own demons too."

She didn't believe in fate, omens, curses. She refused to. But something had twisted inside of her back on Woostri, something had reached into her mind, slipped into the cracks left by years of war and grief, and she had let it. Maybe because, deep down, she had never fought as hard as she should have to keep herself whole.

Her red eyes studied the girl in the chair, taking in the way she shrank away, spoke of herself like a weapon waiting to be drawn.

"You think you're the reason people get hurt?" Alana let out a slow, humorless breath. "It’s not you doing it…whatever that thing is."

She turned fully now, ignoring the way her arm ached, the way exhaustion gnawed at her bones. "You're not some curse. You're not a walking disaster. And whatever's inside of you?" Her gaze hardened. "It doesn't get to define you unless you let it…trust me, I know…"

Tamsin was already signaling the nurse to wheel her away, already retreating into whatever darkness she thought she carried.

Alana wasn't sure why that pissed her off so much.

Maybe because she knew what it was like to be left alone with a weight too heavy to carry. Maybe because she had spent too long believing she was better off keeping her distance.

Maybe because she wasn't going to watch someone else make the same damn mistakes.

As the chair started to move, Alana settled a hand on the arm rest. "Hey."

Tamsin hesitated, glancing back.

"You don't have to run. Not from me."

It wasn't a promise. It wasn't even reassurance. Just a fact. Whatever had happened down there—whatever either of them had seen, or done, or been—it didn't have to be something they faced alone.

 

[Tamsin Graves]

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Theme: Spillways
Location: Harbinger, Medical Ship
Equipment: Medical Gown | Circlet of Projection
Tags: Alana Calloway

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Even as Alaan a said you didn't do anything Tamsin wasn't so sure of that; she was an omen and always had been. Maybe it was just her genetics or a by product of the demon inside her which were one and the same in reality but whatever it was bad luck followed her like a plague. "You may have demons Alana but mine enjoys hurting people."

"I don't think I am the reason people get hurt around me I know I am." Tamsin said solemnly. "The thing inside of me, is me or was me….I mean I am it's clone."

It was hard to say it out loud, it hurt to admit but it was true, and it was the first time she had said it out loud to anyone though a few people knew the truth of it. The monster, the beast, the demon Tamsin was made of its genetics, it had made her in it's image like a false god.

"Maybe whoever they are doesn't define me in totality, yet on a genetic level me and it are the same." It reminded her of one of the philosophy books Kaila had her read. It all went back to the old saying. "It's the age-old debate of nature vs nurture is who you are in your blood or is it the environment that shapes you." Tamsin didn't have the answers, maybe that was the demon's experiment and reason for creating her, but she doubted it cared enough about such things.

"Even I am not at fault, I am responsible for it. It wants to hurt people and make people suffer. I am the only one who can stop it from doing that." Tamsin's eyes watched as Alana reached out and grabbed the arm of her chair and stopped it from moving. She looked up at the echani woman with sadness in her tired eyes.

She could feel it, the anger and frustration. The guilt and sadness as she told Tamsin she didn't have to run away. Telling Tamsin she didn't have to be alone in so few words. The nurse didn't fight, it just stopped the chair from moving away.

"Let me ask you something and I want you think hard on it." Tamsin took a deep breath because she didn't want to hurt Alana with the question, she was about to ask but looking at the woman she felt she had to. "When we down on the planet what was the first thing the demon asked you?" Tamsin wasn't aware of what it asked but she knew it had crawled its way into Alana's mind. "And what was the last choice it offered you?" That part Tamsin had seen even though she had been writhing in pain trapped inside her own mind. As she asked their was a deep sadness in Tamsin's voice about like it was going to crack because on some level she thought she might know what game the demon had played with Alana.

 

[Alana Calloway]

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Licking Wounds​

Location: Harbinger, Medical Ship
Tag: Tamsin Graves
Gear: Medical Gown

Alana's jaw tightened as she held Tamsin's gaze, fingers still gripping the arm of the chair. The quiet hum of the room around them seemed distant, secondary to the weight of what Tamsin had just laid bare.

"You may have demons, Alana, but mine enjoys hurting people."

Alana almost laughed at that. Almost. But it wouldn't have been a laugh of amusement—just something bitter, self-deprecating. Maybe even understanding. Because that was the thing, wasn't it? It wasn't like her demons didn't enjoy hurting people. She just made sure they hurt the right people.

At least, that was what she told herself.

But she knew better.

Tamsin kept going, speaking of clones and monsters, of nature and nurture. Alana didn't interrupt. She listened, though the words stirred something sharp in her chest.

“Even if I am not at fault, I am responsible for it."

That was the line that hit the hardest.

The one Alana knew too damn well.

She swallowed against the knot in her throat, but before she could say anything, Tamsin spoke again.

"Let me ask you something, and I want you to think hard on it."

Alana arched a brow, waiting. Tamsin had captured her attention fully and utterly.

"When we were down on the planet, what was the first thing the demon asked you?"

She went still.

Her fingers curled slightly against the chair, knuckles going taut. The first thing it asked. The last choice it offered.

She exhaled through her nose, steady and slow.

"Do you want to be free of your mental prison?"

"Do you want to be free from your mental prison?"

That was what it had asked.

The way it pressed into her thoughts. Crawled through the cracks of her mind and pulled at the things she'd buried. The things she'd lost. It had dangled them in front of her like a cruel mirage—like it knew how badly she wanted to claw back what had been taken from her. She felt like whatever that entity was, it held her by her strings, her body moving in ways that damaged her very body.

Yet she was powerless to stop it.

And the last choice?

"I am Darth Sokar, if you serve me, you can live if not this shall be your tomb. I swear on all the stars if you kneel before me right now I will cut your damn eyes out."

Her lips pressed into a thin line.

She didn't look away from Tamsin, but there was something dark in her gaze now, something hollowed-out.

"It offered me freedom in exchange for enslavement," She said, voice quiet but unwavering. "To take its hand and walk away. Trade whatever I have left for what it was offering."

Her gaze lost focus, and Alana stared blankly ahead as if lost in the moment.

"I…understand your situation….maybe not entirely but…I’m not entirely myself either…."

 

[Tamsin Graves]

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Theme: Spillways
Location: Harbinger, Medical Ship
Equipment: Medical Gown | Circlet of Projection
Tags: Alana Calloway

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"Then you understand, it wants your soul. It wants to use you up, to get what ever the hell it wants." Tamsin looked up at Alana with a pained look in her eyes, eyes of caring for this thing inside of her only wanted to use the Echani woman in front of her. It saw a weakness it could exploit and use, a freedom in sense but chains in another. Tamsin hope she could see why she wanted to leave to give the woman the freedom she deserved, to stick by her would only mean the damnation of her soul.

"I can't let it do that to you, or anyone else." She knew that Alana wanted to help, wanted to see past the thing inside her. Alana wanted to equate it to her own demons and monsters. Her sister Kaila Irons wanted to the same, but both failed to see the cruelty of the demon inside her from Tamsin's perspective. It wasn't that Tamsin wanted to let into it either, let it isolate her and turn her into it but at the moment she saw no other option.

"I can't watch it destroy everyone and everything around me." Her sights looked at the hand holding her chair. "It will destroy you, this much I know. It doesn't care about life it looks at you and everyone like you are nothing barely acknowledging your existence unless you have something useful to offer it. Then it will just use you until you aren't useful anymore."

It hurt and pained her to say it and if she had any tears to cry her eyes would have been flooded with them. "I hate it, but I can't stop it. It made me, it knows me, and just like everyone else it uses me."

She continued to look down at the hand on her chair wish it would release not because she hated Alana or had any malice towards the Echani. Because she knew Alana would be safer the farther away, she was, just like she knew her sister would be safer if she could run away. Let the demon destroy her and save everyone else from its destruction. Though leaving her sister Kaila behind would be hard and she wasn't sure she could do it but hoped she could. She wanted to save them all, all the people that had come in the path of the demon. Let it take her so they could all be free.

"I like you Alana, I do not want it to damn you, and it clearly wants to. Be free, you owe me nothing. Find joy in life, fight your demons, don't let my demon ruin you. Let me go, forget me, all you will get with me is the damnation of your soul. I don't want that…." Her voice cracked as she said it, she knew she was pushing the woman away isolating herself exactly like the demon wanted. She didn't want to be responsible for the ruination of someone that she knew she could prevent. As she spoke to Alana about letting go, she wondered if others would be willing to let go, if she would be willing to let go. "You're safer that way."

 

[Alana Calloway]

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Licking Wounds​

Location: Harbinger, Medical Ship
Tag: Tamsin Graves
Gear: Medical Gown

Alana's grip on the chair tightened. Her knuckles went white, tension coiling through her arm like a drawn wire, but she didn't let go. Not yet.

Because she did understand. Because the words Tamsin spoke—words meant to push her away—sounded too much like the ones she had told herself a thousand times over.

"It wants your soul."

Like she still had one left to take.

Her jaw clenched, her breath slow and controlled. Tamsin thought she didn't see it for what it was. That Alana was too stubborn, too blind, too willing to throw herself headfirst into damnation for the sake of someone else. Maybe she was right. Maybe she had always been that way. But this wasn't naivety.

It was recognition.

"I don't owe you anything, that much is true." Alana said, her voice low, steady, threading through the storm between them. "But...safety...is just an illusion if you ask me." Her grip finally loosened, but her hand didn't pull away. It just sat there, unmoving, an anchor between them.

"I can take care of myself, and...between the two of us? I'm already damned..."

Her eyes burned—not with anger, not with fear, but with something deeper, something raw.

"Most of my life is...I don't remember it...someone, something, took all that from me..."

Her fingers twitched.

"Sometimes I wake up, and can't remember how I even got out of bed or dressed....yet I'm clad in armor with a blaster in hand....."

She exhaled sharply, shaking her head. "I'm constantly being used....all my memories...everything I can recall, I'm just a byproduct of someone's aims, a goal...just a tool for their use."

She finally let go, but not because she was giving up.

Because the choice had to be Tamsin's.

"I won't forget you," she said, softer now, but no less certain. "And I won't pretend this thing isn't real. But you don't get to tell me what my damnation looks like..and you don't have to face it alone."

Her throat tightened.

"You don't get to decide if I walk away. That's on me."

 

[Tamsin Graves]

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Theme: Spillways
Location: Harbinger, Medical Ship
Equipment: Medical Gown | Circlet of Projection
Tags: Alana Calloway

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Tamsin sat there and listened as she looked for a moment at Alana's grip tighten on her chair. Then back up at the blonde woman's face full of not anger or malice but with a raw frustration of emotion. Emotion that was not easily defined in words, but Tamsin could feel it, it was the palpable.

As the final words left Alana's lips, and the grip loosened on the chair and awkward silence hung in the air. Tamsin lost in words to say, her heart twisted and ached as she thought over the words Alana had spoken trying to muster a response.

She wanted to speak but her tongue seemed tied, and her brain muddled with word soup. There was pain in her eyes as she looked up at Alana, no sound leaving her mouth as she attempted to say something a couple of times, but nothing was said.

She wanted to run but she couldn't just bolt away, leave Alana safe from what was inside of her. The woman before did understand a few things about what she was going through, but she did not know the demon. Tamsin barely did but she was starting to understand it better and what she saw was a cruel uncaring. It was hard to separate herself from the demon and see it as something different than herself as she was its clone.

It wasn't some far fetched thought she could or would turn into that thing one day. All Tamsin could think of doing was to mitigate the damage the demon would cause or the damage she might cause in the future. The only way to do that would be to run, but what if you couldn't run what if those that you cared about followed.

"I…" Her words stuttered as her brain froze once more on words as they did when she was too lost in her own head. "You are right, I can't decide for you." Tamsin could not determine what choices anyone made even if she thought they might lead to damnation or ruination.

"That is your choice to make. I don't want to face it alone but I can't guarantee to anyone who wants to help that I won't turn into the very monster inside of me someday. I can't tell you, you will be safe around me. I can't tell you I will hold to any oath or word I making knowing the blood that runs in veins." It made her think for a moment on the oath she made to her sister and the very thought of breaking that one just tore her apart inside.

"It's your choice then, I need to eat. So come with me or stay, I will understand either way and respect that choice." It hurt deep down she wanted both out comes, wanted Alana to be free of her and the dark shadow that loomed over her but also wanted the woman come with her even if that meant the demon won in a way. The nurse then started to push her away slowly, the air of the chair sliding across Alana's hand. Tamsin gave Alana a slight smile the choice lingering for Alana to make.

 

[Alana Calloway]

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Licking Wounds​

Location: Harbinger, Medical Ship
Tag: Tamsin Graves
Gear: Medical Gown

Alana exhaled, slow and measured, her grip finally easing from the chair. The frustration still simmered beneath her skin, a restless, gnawing thing, but it wasn't directed at Tamsin. No, it never had been.

She could see it—the weight in Tamsin's eyes, the war waging inside her. It wasn't just fear; it was inevitability. That creeping, insidious thought that no matter how hard she fought, no matter what she did, she might still become the very thing she feared.

Alana knew that feeling. Intimately.

Her gaze flicked down to her hands, scarred knuckles flexing. The ghost of old shackles still clung to her wrists in ways no one else could see. It was always there, that question: Am I still me? Or am I just what they made me to be?

Tamsin was giving her an out. She knew it. But the thing about Alana Calloway was that she didn't walk away—not from something that mattered.

She let the silence stretch a little longer, let the words settle before finally pushing herself up from her seat.

"Damned if we do, damned if we don't, huh?" A wry smirk tugged at her lips, but there wasn't much humor behind it. She rolled her shoulders, exhaling through her nose. "Ain't the first time I've followed someone into the unknown."

Then, softer, but firm:

"You don't gotta face it alone."

With that, she fell into step beside Tamsin's new ride, letting her actions speak for her.