Private Long Overdue

[Alina Tremiru]

She shouldn't be here. The only reason was vastly out numbered by the reasons simply not to be. A Sith Temple. In Maw space. To meet the woman who had Quinn Varanin 's heart. Alina gave up on Quinn. Chose for her, so the Echani princess wouldn't have to have that burden. It was an easy choice, right? Half way between life and death, unchanging and forever young, Alina wasn't the right choice. But here she was, staring up at Darth Mori's temple. Her faint glowing eyes devoid of emotion.

What should she feel? Fear of a Sith Lord? Hate for the one who took Quinn's heart? Hope that this Mori wasn't someone who was going to hurt Quinn? Ah. Her lips thinned. That's why she was here. Even if she ran away from Quinn, she couldn't help but want to protect her, then? .. She let out a sigh before stepping into the building, black cloak on, hood up. Looking ever like the Sith she used to be in a hopes to blend in better. She wasn't here to fight.

Not yet.

 

[Vesta]

Darkness Inside​

The fortress was as much a monument to her terror as it was a reminder of her solitude. The scant few servants that tended to the cleaning and maintenance remained hidden from their mistress's sight, learning quickly that the woman would fly into a rage if she was bothered by their presence. Certainly the woman that was at the center of her turmoil had visited once, only once, but it had seemed to only worsen the severity of what could only be described as tantrums. Endless dunes and shining cliffs surrounded the solitary structure that remained on Avidich, but it wasn't the towering castle or the face hewn into the stonework at its front that cast the intimidating haze over the planet in its entirety -

Darth Mori did.

It was a recent phenomena, ever since Onrai had visited with a gift for the Sith lord, but ever since that day the planet itself had seemed to change. The weight of so much death lingered heavy on the world, a consequence of an orbital bombardment that nearly turned its surface into glass, but there was a different miasma that seemed to penetrate even the far side of the barren rock. The lady of the castle, incidentally now stepping down from the base of the stairs at the heart of fortress, had no longer found a reason to restrain herself - not when everything that felt her presence on the world was felt, also, by her.

Not even when the last servant had died, some hours ago.

The front gates, massive and unnecessary in their size and scope, opened despite the broken chains that would have drawn them apart - chains that had been broken the last time they were opened from the inside, the woman that strode out from within responsible on both occasions. It was difficult, after all, for shut doors to open when the ones that had been employed to do so were long gone, devoured by the hunger that she no longer kept at bay. For Quinn Varanin 's sake, however, she restrained herself, and it, so as not to unceremoniously end Alina Tremiru before she had the chance to do whatever it was that she had came to do.

"I wasn't expecting visitors." She said, hands crossed under her chest.

Quinn had been planet-side only a few weeks past, before the substantial change that the Sith had gone through, so she hadn't expected anyone else until the core had been breached - particularly people she wasn't quite so fond of. Especially not the woman whose arms she had found her own paramour in, or perhaps former - she wasn't terribly certain of anything anymore. There was a distinct scowl etched into her face, the sort of look someone gave only to the person they loathed the most. For a while she had been antagonizing the people who had been after Quinn in order to determine whether or not she could replace herself in the event that what she wanted was out of her reach, Felix had certainly proven himself incapable of much more than incredible displays of violence but she had left Alina to her own devices because she already knew the answer to that question.

"Certainly not from.. you." Vesta added with a degree of uncertainty. There was a moment of hesitation before she turned away, as if deciding to simply walk away from this headache, but when she faced the gates and took her first step towards it she grumbled something inaudibly as she decided on something against her better judgment. She lifted a hand and gestured with two fingers and a thumb towards the inside, shaking her head. "If you're here for any reason worth my time then get inside, otherwise leave me alone."

"She isn't here, if that's what you came here for."

 

[Alina Tremiru]

A scowl that was mirrored by Alina herself. The similarities between the two blondes were picked over. Everything Alina could think that might of brought Quinn to Darth Mori's embrace. Or, perhaps, to Alina herself. Mori was the first, right? Her scowl quickly faded as her gaze lowered. No, she shouldn't be thinking like that. Not here, not now. "I didn't come for her." Well, no she did. Just not to get Quinn or- She let out a more aggravated sigh, rubbing at her brow.

This was stupid.

But she went inside anyway.

"I.. Wanted to talk."

 

[Vesta]

The corner of her lip twitched in silent disagreement, there was no other reason to talk if not for understanding whatever it was that drew Quinn to her. The walls were as clean as they were ever going to get, the floors still kept some of their polished shine, and the building itself was rather large, intimidating even. In every sense she was growing into the figure she had set out to be, the woman that she thought that a certain Echani had wanted her to be. Perhaps that was what Alina Tremiru thought she was, someone who had something that made her more than other people, larger than life even. Hunkered down in this fortress alone, however, was more than likely quite a disillusioning slap to the face if that line of thought was anywhere close to being correct.

"I find it rather amusing that, out of everyone, you're the one who wants to talk."

She doubted that Alina knew she had gotten into contact with some of the people who she had witnessed associating with Quinn but she also didn't quite care to hide that fact either, so speaking about it so openly wasn't really a problem. She didn't like the woman, either, so she was more than happy to be a bit rude. She shrugged, the white hood that had been resting on her head slipping back behind her head with the gesture, and made her way to the foot of the stairs at the center of the sprawling entrance hall where she slowly turned to face her unexpected guest.

"So what is it you're here to talk about?"

 

[Alina Tremiru]

An empty castle.

Lonely.

Those were the only thoughts in Alina's mind as she walked through the entrance. There was no one here. Alive, at least. No heartbeats, no smell of blood she'd become so acutely aware of. Just.. Empty. Her brow furrowed. The golden glowing eyes fell back on Darth Mori as the topic on hand was brought up. Right, talk.

"You should leave the Sith before you drag Quinn back in."

 

[Vesta]

Goodbye​

Another voice to the choir.

It was the same words repeated, verbatim, the same cautious request - demand - against something that she had both no control over nor a say in the matter. Another feather on the scales that were forever tipped against her heart's favor, a cruel gesture at worst and a shortsighted concern at best. She had said it when the woman had shown up on her doorstep, hadn't she? "She isn't here." She said again, slower now, from behind clenched teeth. Perhaps it wasn't clear, maybe she hadn't made the full breadth of the meaning of her words blatant enough.

"I can push her away all that you like, it won't matter - she won't stay away for long."

Of course she knew that there was nothing good for Quinn Varanin to be found in the Sith, much less in Vesta, but there was little she could do besides lie to keep the woman away. Things had been set in motion that could not be wound back, the Shi'ido leaving the Sith behind was now out of the question, but this was a conversation she had, more or less, already had with Quinn. "I don't know who it is that you think that I am but I am not that person." She continued, resting her hand on the edge of the railing that ran along the side of the staircase. Her fingers curled around its curvature, knuckles growing white with the physical pressure she put on it with her tightening grip that grew with her frustration.

"I am the Sith."

The woman had no right to have insight into the future that she was carving ahead for herself, for the innerworkings of the woman's mind, but, as if on impulse, Vesta decided to indulge her a little. "I am the evil that grows with every sacrifice made in the name of the so-called prosperity of the purported 'free people' throughout the galaxy, the spite that flows like sweat from the brow of the overworked. The hatred for the unfair, the cries of the damned - I see this galaxy for what it really is, for all of its flaws and faults, and for the undeserving masses that plague it." She rattled off. "She taught me how to see life for what it was, showed me what I could have had if circumstances had been different - if we had been free to choose without the burden of a neighbor's hate."

"I cannot leave behind who I am, what defines me at my core, because it would mean leaving behind a chance to have with her what I should have had all along."

Happiness, love, those were things for people, something the wretched cheats of the galaxy did not see her as.

"She asked me to choose between my vision and her, told me I could not have them both, so I chose neither - I abandoned the goal for power that she had pushed me to strive for when we were younger and I instead pivoted towards something bigger than either of those things." She explained, still as bitter now as she had been when she realized then that she had been forced into a life that was hardly worth living at all. She made a sweeping gesture with her right hand, gesturing to the empty room behind the vampire and all around them. "All of this, this meaningless façade we surround ourselves with, is little more than a means to cope with our inability to truly control our lives, to dictate our own terms. This entire galaxy, the universe, reality itself, was made as little more than a cage - chains - to keep us captive in, subject to the whims of our warden."

"The force."

She scowled, as if those words had left a bitter taste in her mouth. "I cannot, will not, force her to leave if she chooses to stay, she is her own master." She said as she finally came around to the crux of the matter. "Everything I do is for her, for a galaxy where my being a Sith was never necessary - where this conversation would have never happened."

"I am not the one who needs to choose to walk away, she is."

 

[Alina Tremiru]

Oh.

Alina blinked slowly as she listened to Darth Mori. Somewhat listened. In truth, she didn't think too far in everything the Sith was saying. It.. Just sounded like any other Sith to the Vampiress. Power for self justified reasons. On a deeper level it probably was something more. If she thought about it, maybe Alina could actually agree with this line of thought. But, it was still crazy. A crazy that Quinn chose to be involved with.

A crazy that Quinn couldn't bring herself to either leave or stay with.

"So you'd rather chase after this Sith ideal, regardless of the hurt it'd bring Quinn, to.. Be with her?" Oops. That was a bit more sarcastic than she was intending, but it was getting harder by the second to just.. Walk away like she'd intended to do.

This was the person she was going to forfeit her affection to so Quinn wouldn't have to choose?

"I'm a literal vampire, but you're in your own kind of fantasy. One that'll ruin her. Do you really not care?"

 

[Vesta]

Ah, there it was. Feelings.

Intense, even if muted, they were still there. It had been why she had chosen to walk away when she had the chance because she had recognized there was something mutual between the woman and Quinn, taking that away from either of them would have been a mistake - it was the moment she had decided that she would commit to what she now found herself permanently affixed to. It wasn't her fault that something had happened between them, that was something that had happened before Rhand of all things had taken placed, and she had made a conscious effort to stay as far away from them as was possible because she knew that something would have happened if she had so much as revealed herself, either at the time or any point after.

"No."

Of course Alina Tremiru wasn't entirely wrong, she had nailed the essential end goal, but it wasn't one she would realize in this life, let alone this galaxy. "She made that choice. She stayed." She insisted, ignoring the rather embarrassing begging she had made to try to appeal to Quinn had even happened. It was easier that way. It dawned on her, then, that the matter of her being with Quinn wasn't a question, it was like a state of being, a constant, that she was expected to be in - like gravity, or something else equally as determined. It occurred to her, once, that she experienced things differently than other people, that she understood the choices she made as a consequence of someone else were still her own decisions at the end of the day.

She hadn't ever anticipated anyone expecting her to make a decision dependent on the choices of another, though.

"Oh, I think I'm starting to understand this," Vesta said slowly while she narrowed her eyes. "You want me to do what you're asking me because you think there isn't any possibility for Quinn except to be with me, is that it?" She asked, ignoring the woman's question for another minute longer. She considered that perspective, tried to rationalize her own choices within its framework only to be faced with its central axiom preventing her from doing so. If this stranger cared so much about Quinn, to the extent that she'd suggest abandoning her own decisions because of the assumption that Quinn couldn't ever choose anything except to be with her, then when her own mortality was brought into question - especially from the perspective of someone who probably loathed her - there wasn't a doubt in her mind that the vampire would gladly tell her to just roll over and die.

She narrowed her eyes.

"I won't pretend to be offended, I find it hard to care about the perspective of someone who was just a replacement for me in their own mind, but I do care. I walked away, I realized that I would never get to have with her what I had before." Nobody had ever asked her what she had wanted, not even Quinn, there had only ever been assumptions. "What I want to do is something that I decided to do, something I am now irretrievably bound to, when I saw that the person I had wanted to spend my life with had decided to find someone else." She said bitterly. As much as she repressed that part of her, tried to act like she wasn't still angry or upset over what she had discovered, that had been the entirety of her motivation for a long time and still was. Forgiveness had been trained out of her, like loyalty had been drilled into the members of her family that had had a childhood in their young age. "If you care so much about this then go and tell her yourself. I don't have a choice anymore, I already made my own stupid decisions and now I have to live with them, or die because of them."

She waved a hand in exasperation towards the ceiling, the gesture superfluous and completely devoid of any meaning except to illustrate her frustration with this. She hadn't expect a visitor, much less her, and she certainly hadn't prepared herself to be castigated over something she had regularly beaten herself over by the person she had found Quinn with during, arguably, one of the more vulnerable points in her life. Inhale, exhale. "Look, I get it, I'm a piece of shit and I am probably the worst thing possible for her right now, really, I do. If I go and hang up my proverbial robe, on the other hand, nothing happens except I die and I guess she'd probably blame herself." She said, trying to calm herself down and keep herself from getting pulled into some argument over circular logic. "If I had the chance to go back and undo everything, I would, in fact that's exactly what I am trying to do."

"Believe me, if I didn't think that she'd blame herself if I died then the very first thing I would have done is killed myself so she would do something better with her life the moment I realized that she wasn't going to stay away."

She shrugged.

"I tried to leave her with you when I saw the two of you together. That apparently didn't work."

 

[Alina Tremiru]

"Quinn won't choose you or me. She cares too much, loves us too much. I just love her enough to spare her that pain." The vast difference between them was getting more and more clear the longer Darth Mori went on her tangent. Alina wasn't here to wage war on the Force. She wasn't here for some higher purpose or desire to fix things that were broken everywhere. She was just here for Quinn.

No, not for Quinn. Herself. Justifying her own choice to cut Quinn from her life so they both could be happy. That Vesta, the one Quinn spoke so highly and lovingly about, was someone she could trust to keep Quinn happy.

"She talks about you, you know. The good, the memories. What's been going on between you and her. We never hid things from each other. Though, maybe she's just been clinging to a version of you that doesn't exist anymore. I was hoping, for whatever reason, we could at least get along. I don't hate you for being someone she loves. I don't wish you gone. I'm jealous that you can give her a life I can't." No, no. Seeing this empty castle and this broken woman, Alina shook her head.

"Or I thought you could. You're going to get yourself killed chasing after.. Whatever it is you want." So what did that mean? The Vampiress frowned, turning her gaze from the Sith before her to the empty castle.

"Seems I've made several mistakes."