Private Love and Corruption: Shadows of the Past

[Hawk Hinata]

The plough tilled the hard soil in long neat furrows that ran parallel across the field. Hawk wiped the sweat from his brow with the shirt he had tied around his waist; then he stretched the muscles of his back and poured the last of the water in his canteen over his head. The hot yellow sun had now dipped below the peaks of the purple snow-capped mountains that overlooked the farm, but in its place rose the cooler red sun of the night. There was no true night for months at a time on this strange little world, and while that made growing food rather easy, it made a normal daily routine somewhat more difficult.

Hawk pushed his damp hair out of his face, his fingers brushing over the metallic healing device that the Archivist had placed upon him. It still felt warm upon his temple, and Hawk hoped that meant it was working. At the very least, he had not suffered any temporal shifts since it had been attached to him. In fact, Hawk had barely thought about the past since they had landed here. A quiet life of good honest hard work had likely done them both some good, after their frantic struggles against Mandalorian cults; God-like entities; intergalactic genocidal aliens, and of course Kat's own brother.

Unhitching the plough from the beast that bore it, Hawk set it to one side and placed a basket of food before the creature. He patted its flank before grabbing a second basket, filled with fresh vegetables and grains, and headed back for the homestead.

"Kat," Hawk called as he entered. "How was market?" He continued having sensed she was home.

 

[KitKatt]

When freedom burns
The final solution
Dreams fade away and all hope turns to dust
When millions burn
The curtain has fallen
Lost to the world as they perish in flames

​

Katarine opened her eyes and looked around. There was smoke everywhere, but she couldn't smell anything burning. It was almost like she was standing in the middle of a dark fog with barely recognizable shapes on the other side.

"Where am I?"

"I think it's a different dimension."

She spun around and felt her blood turn cold. Daxium Ryiah was standing feet from her, his arms crossed over his massive chest in a very characteristic gesture. She narrowed her eyes at him for a moment, but it was like a wild animal that you knew could kill you, but wasn't going to just yet. She turned away from him and glanced around more, but he was the only other thing in this blank fog filled space.

"Am I dreaming?"

He grabbed her arm suddenly and she felt something pinch her skin right above her wrist. She jerked it away and noticed there was blood now dripping down her hand.

"No."

She glared at him and pressed her fingers to the small cut to stop the bleeding. "Why am I here Daxium?"

"I wanted to talk."

"You couldn't have called?"

He ignored her and sat down at a table that was certainly not there moments ago. He indicated she should join him but when she stood there glaring he shrugged.

"I think we need to work together to figure out what we are and what we can do."

"I don't want to know what I can do. I want it all to stop."

"It's not going to stop. You unlocked something and now it's out there. Remember when you sent me to that pit? I think that was a different dimension. Just like this one.... only I created this one."

Her eyes went wide with fear. "That doesn't terrify you?"

"It excites me. This is better than any prophecy that stupid cult could come up with."

She felt her stomach squirm and turned her back on him, looking for the way out of this place. It had to be a dream. Nothing else made sense.

"I think I have a lead on where we can go for answers."

"I told you I don't want answers. I want it to go away."

She flinched when she realized he was in front of her, yet she had not seen him move.

"Just come with me. Bring the Jedi too if you must."

"Stay away from Hawk Hinata."

"With pleasure. But I still think we should work together to figure this out."

"Go to hell."

"Already been. Learned a lot."

He grabbed her arm and she felt it start to burn as a dark black energy seeped out of his fingertips. It was a lot like the pure white light that came from her own hands, but it was black and moved like smoke.


BEEEEEEEP!!!!

Suddenly a loud blaring horn shook her concentration. She blinked and winced as intense sunlight burned her eyes. She was standing in the middle of a small street, with a hover car blaring its horn at her to get out of the way.

"What..."

"GET OUT OF IT LADY!"

"Sorry."

She crossed the rest of the street towards the market and glanced down at her arm. Two of her fingers were burned black and the cut above her wrist was still bleeding.


-------------------------------------------------------------


"Kat," Hawk called as he entered. "How was market?

"It was.... interesting"

Kat sat a small bag down in the tiny kitchen. She and Hawk had been playing farm life for a while and she felt like it was helping him heal. But she was not a true farmer and could not stand the thought of slaughtering an animal, and refused to let him do it, so they got most of their meet and anything they couldn't grow from the market.

She heard him coming and quickly slipped her burnt fingers into her pocket.

"You know I think you may have been a farmer in another life Hinata. You've taken to it well."

Hawk Hinata

 

[Hawk Hinata]

Hawk laughed lightly and leant forward to place a kiss upon her cheek. He would have pulled her to him for a proper kiss, but after working in the field for hours the odds were definitely in favour of him requiring a shower first.

"I did grow up on a moisture farm." he mused. Though getting into scrapes between the evaporators isn't quite the same I suppose."

The Jedi Master always knew when something was troubling Kat, but he also knew that she would tell him about it in her own time without being pressed. Hawk supposed her reluctance to open up and to share her burdens was a relic of her own childhood, and perhaps the knowledge that her burdens were heavy on a galactic scale.

"I'll go and wash up for dinner..." The rest of Hawk's words were cut off by a loud rapping upon their wooden door.

Their door swung open and Hawk found himself face to face with the sheriff from the market town. Hawk didn't know what species he was, but he was short, stocky, and had patches of white fur that bristled around his neck.

"How you folks doin'?" The sheriff chewed on something as he spoke, a small smile on his face that did nothing to improve his looks.

"We're doing just fine thank you sheriff, how can I help?" Hawk responded wiping his hands in a cloth and splashing his face with water from a barrel on their porch.

"Well ya see, your lady were in town earlier, an' some'a the townsfolk reported that she seemed..." He chewed for a moment and spat a thick glob of brown spit onto the dirt, "...possessed." he finally finished.

Hawk held in his exasperation. The townsfolk were not a particularly enlightened people. For all their technology, they still held some very medieval beliefs and spooked easily. Just the other week he had heard tale of the Innkeeper's wife receiving ten lashes for immodestly smiling at one of their customers.

"Is that so sheriff?" Hawk continued to smile. "My...lady...has an affliction of the mind, it plagues our species I'm afraid." Hawk almost smiled at his own silly lie. "My own mind affliction is much worse, you see this?" Hawk told him tapping the alien device on his head. "Without it, why, I might be somewhat less amicable."

The sheriff chewed thoughtfully for a few moments, his eyes assessing the human before him. Hawk could sense the tension in him and noted how his hand hung close to the holster at his side.

"Them folks'a sayin' she's a witch," he licked his lips and his fingers moved across the holster clip.

"You'll be dead before your fingers close around it," Hawk said and waved his hand.

"I'll be dead before my fingers close around it," he repeated back to Hawk.

"Go back into town and assure the folk there that my...lady...is no witch."

"I'll go back into town and assure them your lady is no witch." He intoned.

"Well, glad I could help clear that up sheriff," Hawk smiled again and closed the door in his face.

The sheriff stood for a moment and shook his head before heading back to his speeder bike.

"Sheriff had some...interesting town chit chat to share," Hawk raised his right eyebrow seeing if Kat had overheard the conversation.

 

[Thistle Hinata]

The sound of water dripping somewhere deeper into the darkness was all that disturbed the silence of the dungeon. It held only a few inhabitants, and none of them were fool enough to make a sound that might bring attention down upon them. It was much better to hope their existence had been forgotten, and to die of thirst in the meantime.

Aisling didn't know how long she had been there in her cell. There was no natural light by which to mark the passage of time, only her hunger and the occasional rat let her know that she even still existed. The darkness was so complete that without it she would have lost all sense of self some time ago, plus if she was quick she could snatch up a rat as it walked over her and eat it.
She remembered the first time she had killed a rat to eat. Hesitantly bringing its limp body to her mouth; the smell of its damp fur making her gag, but her stomach held nothing to bring up. The first bite broke what was left of the girl she had once been. The young archaeologist setting out on an adventure to explore ancient ruins. The meat was foul and she cried as its still warm blood dribbled down her chin...but now, days...perhaps weeks, or even months later she lay silent in the dark waiting excitedly to feel the scrabbling feet of a rat upon her body.

A light flickered down the stone hallway and Aisling scurried to the corner of her cell, her hand moving to cover her face lest she should breath too loudly or make another sound. The light bobbed up and down as it came nearer and despite what she had become, the girl in the cell began to cry again and as the little creature came into view she lost control of her bowels.

"Is this the one Speedy?" A girl's voice spoke with a musical quality that seemed so out of place within such a macabre setting.

A little girl? Aisling thought to herself in dismay. She needs to run before the creature gets her. And before Aisling could stop herself she called out. The sound was little more than a grunt as her vocal chords refused to make the words. She had not spoken in such a long time. It was enough.

The small creature moved back towards her cell and panic clamped down on any further sounds she might have made. Her eyes bulged as the bolts drew back, but still fear made a mute of her.

"Oohh, its this one!" Came the little girl's voice again and the red light of what she had thought to be a fiery torch illuminated a shadowy figure.

Aisling's eyes burned in the light of the crimson blade, but slowly her sight adjusted and she looked up into the face of a young girl. She was a very pretty little thing, but there was also something entirely terrifying about her pale features...and her eyes...her eyes were like fiery embers of madness.

"I must know. I must. If he is, than what was, is what is - and what was now is not, and what would have been is no more than what could have been."

The girl grew close to her but Aisling had no idea what she was talking about.

"Tears?" The little girl cooed and touched a pale finger to the dirt streaked lines where her tears had meandered down her face. "If only tears held the answers. They are but the heralds of pain and anguish; the smoke that betrays the fire. I will have them." The girl licked the tears from her face and cackled dementedly. "Yes, I will have them all, and I will have more. I will have every agony that is yours to give and one more than that."

Aisling's eyes flicked to one side as a small shadow moved. She could see the little creature clearly now, but that did nothing to calm her. It was a bear. A child's bear. Aisling could almost not comprehend what she was seeing. Perhaps she had simply gone insane in the darkness. The bear's face was contorted into a sneer and it stood and moved all by itself. There was nothing cute and fluffy about it. The wretched thing was missing an eye, and as she stared at it in disbelief...long rusted-metal nails emerged from its paws as if it had claws.

Aisling's screams and unheeded pleas for mercy filled the dungeons for hours. The remaining inhabitants were simultaneously sickened by the sounds; relieved it was not them, but aware that one day soon it might be. The best they could do was to block out the sounds in any way they could. By the third hour, the occupant of the cell adjacent to Aisling had perforated his own ear drums with rat bones in the hopes of going deaf.

Finally, when it was over and the red light receded, silence returned to the dungeons.

"I felt him Speedy, my uncle is alive."

 

[Username]

"Sheriff had some...interesting town chit chat to share,"

Kat signed and leaned her back against the wall.

"I wish I knew what to tell them." The truth was she had no idea what she was, though apparently her twin had a lead on the subject. She slid off her jacket and slung in on the counter, revealing the weird black burn on her arm.

"I had a sister brother moment in the town. I'm guessing the towns people saw and it spooked them."

It spooked her too come to think of it. She rubbed her temples, pushing back her long brown hair and signed.

"Dax thinks he has a way to figure it out. Guess the townspeople will be happy. I wouldn't want them to waste a good witch burning on somebody who wasn't a witch."

Hawk Hinata

 

[Hawk Hinata]

Hawk sighed inwardly as Kat told her story. It would have been nice to continue leading the simple life; to work the farm; to enjoy their picnics by the riverbank, but he had only been fooling himself to believe they could have those things for long. The force had snatched each of them from their own time and put them in the here and now for more than sowing fields and eating cakes while listening to the gentle burbling of the river.

In a few swift steps, Hawk moved to her and took her hands in his. He brushed his thumbs over the soft skin upon the back of her hands before raising her fingers to his lips and kissing them.

"We don't need Daxium to figure anything out," Hawk told her. "Besides, I'd sooner trust that old plough beast not to throw me if I tried riding her again than your brother not to betray us." Hawk smiled as he remembered the first time he had tried to till the field and been dumped unceremoniously onto his back in the mud. He had walked beside the creature instead of trying to ride her ever since.

"Perhaps it is time that we started some...training," Hawk said, unable to think of a better word for helping Kat to control her power. "I am feeling strong again after all, physically and with the force."

After they had escaped the Ascended ship and the energy that Kat had shared with him had worn off and Hawk had been unable to get out of bed for days, completely unable to reach the force. He had been drained in such a way that he had never felt before. Only the constant warmth upon his head from the alien healing device kept him conscious at all.
Days later and they had arrived on this backwater world, and over the past few months the physical labour had brought back Hawk's strength, while the peace and isolation had allowed him to find the force once more.

 

[Username]

Kat smirked at the memory of Hawk laying in the mud. After a brief moment of panic the incident had turned to hilarity and she had found herself laughing so hard she couldn't stand anymore. It probably wasn't the nicest way to handle your friend being dumped in the mud, but for some reason the sight had been a damn breaking and all the tension and worry from the past bit had flowed through into laughter. But the times before that had been anything from funny. Hawk had been so weak and Kat was tormented by the idea that she had killed him. That made little sense to the Jedi. Hawk Hinata was the strongest person she knew so how could a fraction of the white energy lay him out for days but it could flow inside her untouched and she was fine? The more she had to do with this weird energy the more questions she had.

"Perhaps it is time that we started some...training," Hawk said, unable to think of a better word for helping Kat to control her power. "I am feeling strong again after all, physically and with the force."

She sighed and shook her head. She wasn't sure what Hawk could do for her, or how he could have a brief encounter with this and suddenly seem so confident. Why couldn't she be that way?

"I don't want to hurt you again. I don't want to hurt anybody ever again." She turned away from him and sighed, before pulling her long brown hair up into a pony tail, and then leaning both hands on the counter, hanging her head over the sink. A vague idea had been forming in her head ever since she left the market. If Dax could make his own dimension maybe she could too. Maybe she could make a prison to contain the both of them for all eternity. Then nobody would be hurt by whatever type of freak shows they were.

Of course that would require training. She sighed in frustration again.

Hawk Hinata

 

[Hawk Hinata]

"You didn't hurt me Kat," Hawk reminded her as he set the small metal kettle upon their stove and began to heat some water for tea. "You reached through time to save me and left a portion of your light within me. It may have only happened months ago from our perspective now, but I have learned much about harnessing and controlling this power in the decades since you placed it within me."

Time was a strange force to mess with, but doing so had not been the intention of either of them. Events had conspired to create a bridge between the present and the past within Hawk's mind, and had Kat not followed him across that bridge he may never have returned. The loop had now closed however, the light within him had been planted long ago and he had lived to see its placement...and the bridge in his mind? Hawk wasn't sure. The device that the Archivist had placed upon his temple seemed to have stopped his episodes of absence into the past, but it was still active and still radiated the same warmth it had when first placed upon him. Hawk did not know what would happen if he took it off, and was not yet ready to find out if he was healed and the bridge broken.

"Just as we are not the Sith because of the choices we make, you are not your brother."

The kettle began to whistle softly and Hawk removed it from the heat before setting out three cups upon the counter and pouring the boiling water over the tea.

"I have sensed a presence," Hawk commented as he passed a cup to Kat; kept a cup for himself and placed the third at the end of the table. "One I did not expect, but should have after speaking with the trapped spirit of my grandfather."

Hawk had not spoken much about the visions he had had of Phoenix when he had sought to hide his mind from the dark God Tenebris, but Hawk's ability to withstand the power of primordial deities and weild the light itself were not the old man's only legacy. Hawk's genetics were not the only ones that bore his fingerprints. In a moment of intrigue, Hawk suddenly wondered where Phoenix had acquired the genetic material he had worked into the Hinata DNA, but that curious thought could wait. She was coming.

 

[Thistle Hinata]

A man such as Hawk Hinata might try to disappear. He might even succeed for a while, but it could never last. The visions That Thistle had extracted from the time she and Aisling had enjoyed together had set her on the path to finding him, and whispers, rumours and the sickening stench of self-righteous good deeds took her the rest of the way.
The planet that eventually loomed in the window of the transport vessel was a verdant paradise, bathed in the nurturing light of two suns. It seemed perfectly positioned so that it benefitted from their life-giving energy while avoiding the shear of their combined gravitational influence.

A lovely place to raise children

The thought struck through her mind like lightning and burned with the ferocity of the binary system within which she found herself.

"Stupid girl," she hissed at herself as she wiped a tear from her cheek as if it were poison.

To the outside world she held the appearance of a young girl, perhaps ten or twelve at most, but she had lived a hundred lifetimes...and yet not lived one. She was doomed never to age; never to grow old and never to die. Oh there were some deviants interested in her in that way, and she had ensured their bodies were never found...but she had longed to not be alone, and stared with furious envy at happy families and mothers with their children.

"I'm sorry your head got all mushy," she suddenly said to the pilot, but the ignorant fool didn't respond to her apology...deciding to continue decaying instead like some rude corpse.

The three families on board hadn't spoken much to her either during their journey, but Thistle didn't care. They all looked stupid in the airlock where she'd put them anyway. All making stupid swollen faces at her and making themselves turn weird shades of blue.

Even Speedy was sullen by the time the transport vessel touched down in the middle of some field. Thistle hadn't thought much about this whole thing. Was she angry that Hawk was alive? Or secretly glad that she had family? It all really boiled down to whether she had come all this way to make his skull into an ornament for her wall, or give him a hug. Family events were always so complicated.

The field led to a quaint little farmstead. It made a picturesque setting that wouldn't have been out of place in one of those cheesy lifestyle magazines. Homely. Thistle immediately hated it. Yet, instead of doing what any self-respecting sociopath would do and burning it and its occupants to ashes, she found herself knocking almost politely upon the door.

Now, when someone with such a murderable face as her uncle Hawk opens the door completely unarmed, as if for all the world expecting not to be stabbed a half dozen times, and then grins in that way some people have that invites you to peel their face off and fry it for a light (and crispy) evening snack...you have to unfrrrysn...underdyaaaaa (One...two...three...). Thistle ground her teeth and balled her fists, counting as her anger flared and broke her train of thought. You had to understand the level of restraint it took someone very much partial to a crispy face, not to take advantage of the moment.

"Why aren't you dead!" She demanded hearing the childish whine in her voice and hating Hawk for it. "Is that tea?" She asked forgetting to hate him as she stepped into the room beyond and sniffed at the cup. "Who are you? You smell funny, like sadness and my uncle," she made a face at Kat and sipped at her tea.

 

[Username]

"You didn't hurt me Kat, You reached through time to save me and left a portion of your light within me. It may have only happened months ago from our perspective now, but I have learned much about harnessing and controlling this power in the decades since you placed it within me."

Kat signed pushed her hair out of her eyes. Wouldn't it be lovely to just have a normal life? Maybe that was her problem. She had only become a Jedi to escape the Dark Jedi Cult she was born into after all. Kat was a kind person and she did want to help others, but her life was always so complicated that it was hard not to be consumed by it. What were other women her age doing? Nurseries and diapers?

Other women your age are dead you moron. Your like ancient.

She snorted and glanced back at Hawk, noticing he was making tea and talking about a presence. The next thing Kat knew she was face to face with a little girl who seemed to know Hawk.


"Who are you? You smell funny, like sadness and my uncle,"

"Um... My name is Katarine." She raised her eyebrow at Hawk. "Perhaps we do need introductions since I am not sure who you are either."

Hawk Hinata

 

[Hawk Hinata]

"This is my niece, Thistle," Hawk replied to Kat as the menace that the name belonged to sniffed at his tea. "And the less said about this thing..." Hawk continued and in the blink of an eye the ignited white blade of the lightsaber Kat had forged for him barred the door to what appeared to be a Teddy bear. "...the better. Pets outside!"

Hawk closed the door, despite the bear managing a fair facsimile of a death stare.

"I'm alive because I crashed on a frozen world and entered a state of force sustained stasis for a thousand years beneath the ice. You shouldn't have come here."

"Don't make empty threats. You wouldn't kill me as a child, and even if you could now...I'm still a child." Thistle snorted. "Besides, if I was here to fight I wouldn't come knocking on your little wooden door...but like a harbinger of death; a whisper of shadow upon the wall." she whispered to herself.

"So, why are you here?"

 

[Thistle Hinata]

Thistle's lip curled into a sneer as Hawk prevented Speedy from entering, but she said nothing. Her uncle knew very well that her bear was no pet, but she supposed he did not want her bear to frighten his...friend.

"I am here because you are where you should not!" She shouted accusingly. "When darkness rises, the light should rise to meet, not pluck a champion through time lest it suffer some defeat." Thistle rotated her jaw causing it to crack in an attempt to stop talking in rhyme. "The light cheated!" She blurted and held her hands over her mouth to stifle any poetic mumbling. "And you!" She whirled on Kat, her face contorting as she fought against the tirade of rhyming couplets that threatened to explode from her. "That which you were then. That which you have always been. That which you'll be again." She groaned realising she had only managed to reduce herself to cryptic Haiku.

 

[Username]

The situation was beyond confusing. The little girl was babbling and seemed somehow upset Hawk was alive. Even more odd was that the little girl seemed to have opinions about Kat, which was odd because they had never even met.

She glanced at Hawk in confusion. This situation needed finesse. It needed a slow and carefully measured approach so that all the variables could be sorted and she could gain some understanding.

“Umm… was that a teddy bear?”


Way to go Katarine. Such grace at approaching the tough questions.

Hawk Hinata

 

[Hawk Hinata]

Hawk raised a quizzical eyebrow at Thistle himself. The girl had lost none of the crazy that underpinned her brilliance. She was half witch and had inherited the gift of prophecy from her mother; her raw power and sadism from her father, but it was Hawk's cousin Talon who had taken her in after her parents died...and it was he who had taught her the ways of the force.

"A prophecy?" Hawk asked. "Is that how you knew we were here...how you know Kat?" The Jedi poured himself a new cup of tea and leaned forward. "But what does it mean?"

 

[Thistle Hinata]

Thistle's eyes blazed a fierce orange. This was not going in any of the ways she had hoped it would. For one thing, nobody had yet commented on her choice of soft woven black robes, or complimented her black opal broach like she had envisioned it. All anyone ever cared about was Speedy. He always got all the attention. Thistle was suddenly glad that Hawk had made him stay outside. As much as she loved him, she wondered how much more attention she'd get if her twin had done the decent thing and not possessed her Teddy when he died. The thought of Kete caused the rage to subside and allowed the sadness to seep through. Today it had a rather tart raspberry flavour in her brain, it wasn't bad, but she did prefer her sadness with a little more saltiness to it.

"For a moment she ignored Hawk..." Thistle licked her lips and shoved away the desire to monologue her actions in the third person, but also glared menacingly at her writer in a fourth wall break that insisted he just get on with it, to which end, in the full knowledge that she has read the previous paragraph...we can assume here that Thistle explains the bear to Kat.

"I had a vision. I saw you both illuminated by her light, but I knew you to be dead..."

Thistle began to outline, and then shade in...in unnecessary detail, the hours she had spent extracting the pain and suffering from Aisling in order to trigger a prophecy. Her eyes glittered with the memory of the time they had spent together. They had laughed and danced together, played a little chess; bitten each others fingers off...Thistle looked down at her own hands and frowned as she wriggled her fingers.

"Maybe I played that one alone...but it does explain how I beat her at rock, paper, scissors every time...I thought she just liked rocks."

Another thing that irked her was that neither of them seemed to appreciate exactly how difficult it was to flay someone with a bishop sharpened at one end. She had giggled at how pointy his hat had been, though Aisling seemed to have some illogical fear of pointy hatted bishops, which if you asked Thistle...and no one did...was a very specific sort of phobia that seemed terribly unlikely to come up unless you were being flayed by one in a dungeon.

"Err," She had lost her train of thought and also dribbled slightly down her chin at the memory of how they had roasted their faces toge... "Damn," Thistle swore as she felt her own face still whole.

"I saw you both here, but you brought a shadow with you," she accused Kat. "A shadow that is you but not; a shadow that you were once a part of; that you are still a part of, and that you will merge with again...I peered into the future as far as I could see. As far as can be seen. But there was only darkness. No life. No stars. Nothing. I peered and saw nothing. The shadow comes and you are not ready."

 

[Username]

Kat was watching the little girl talk with a mixture of pity and disgust. She wondered why Hawk hadn’t killed Thistle yet. Surely he couldn’t just let her leave when she spoke so openly of torturing and murdering people?

Her mind drifted towards Dax and she twitched. It was hard to kill family members, even when they did wrong.

Speaking of Dax… the girl started to mention a shadow and Katarine narrowed her eyes. Was Dax the shadow? Or was something else coming?

“I see.”

She looked at Hawk, uncertain what to make of this information. She knew Dax was coming but now she was worried something else was coming.

“Was this shadow a man?”

Hawk Hinata

 

[Thistle Hinata]

"Your emotions betray your fear," Thistle lightly sniffed in Kat's direction and smiled. "Emotion is the source of all power in the universe whether you Jedi deny it or not. All art, music and literature requires emotion, and those are the things that separate us from the non-senrient creatures...and rocks." She stood and moved a little closer to Kat. "You can either harness that power for yourself, or wait for someone to harness it against you. This shadow only holds power over you because you fear it...and, She sniffed again. "...yourself."

Thistle's lucidity had returned, which was a shame because the farmstead wasn't half as exciting a place as she had imagined. Perhaps she had watched one too many old western HoloNetflix movies and expected an interesting gunfight where everyone missed the main character with a hail of fire, and yet he picked them off with individual shots. Regardless, the female Jedi could prove interesting.

"Of course, when the emotion is easy, we accept it more readily." Thistle grinned as she eyed them both. It didn't take a force sensitive to feel the sexual tension between the woman and her uncle.

"A man?" Thistle mulled the question over for a short while. "My visions aren't like tuning into the holonews, but it is a man who casts the shadow. Do you know what casts the greatest of shadows?"

 

[Username]

Katarine rolled her eyes and briefly wondered if Hawk would get upset if she punched this girl in the face.

“The Jedi don’t deny the power of emotion. We acknowledge it. We teach respect for it. We actively warn against it. Giving in to that power is what we deny.”

Sighing, she got up and went to rinse her teacup out in the sink. From what she could tell this girl looked like a child but wasn’t one. Even weirder was the fact that she seemed as old as Hawk, or at least from the same time period. Oh and she was nuts. That much was evident.

"My visions aren't like tuning into the holonews, but it is a man who casts the shadow. Do you know what casts the greatest of shadows?"

“Fair enough.”

She supposed it was fair to point out Force visions weren’t always crystal clear. She dried her cup and put it up in the small shelf of the tiny kitchen.

“Is there anything else or should I leave you for some family bonding time?”

She smirked at Hawk but it quickly turned into a wince as a pain shot through her head. She felt angry suddenly and had to close her eyes again to control the sudden outburst threatening to erupt.

“She’s right. He’s getting closer.”

And he’s not happy. Why was his irritation flowing into Kat? She glanced at the child again and suddenly felt sympathetic. It wasn’t fun to hear and feel things that weren’t there.

Hawk Hinata

 

[Hawk Hinata]

Hawk shot Kat a look at her mention of 'family bonding time'. For everything that Thistle had said and told them, she had still not revealed the reason for her being there. It was easy to forget that she was not the child she appeared to be, but he could not forget that she had been raised by his cousin after her parents died, and Talon had been the kind of Sith who could wreak galactic havoc with little more than his words.
The look immediately evaporated from his features as he saw the pain cross her face.

It was possible that Thistle was concerned with the fate of the galaxy, especially if her prophecy of there being no future was true...but then again, she was a wretched creature condemned to live forever as a child, so the end of forever might hold some appeal for her.
Whatever her angle, Hawk was not fool enough to trust her intentions.

"If he is coming than he will need a gateway." Hawk thought back to the Crystal Hall that Daxium had used in his previous attempt to return. "Unless he has learned of a new way to return from where you sent him. Either way, we need to explore your power and train if we are to contain him."

Hawk turned to the window as the red light of dawn began to refract as the sun rose higher and the lilac-blue of the day stretched as far as the eye could see. Pinpricks of flickering orange light began to collect on the hill beyond the newly tilled fields. More and more gathered, and in the new day's light Hawk could just about make out the forms of those who held them.

"I don't think the Sheriff managed to convince the town's folk that you're not a witch," Hawk sighed. "Ironically we do have a half-witch here now. I say we leave by the back and head into the mountains."

 

[Username]

"Unless he has learned of a new way to return from where you sent him. Either way, we need to explore your power and train if we are to contain him."

Kat looked down at her arm where the weird black burn was still there, hidden by the sleeve of her jacket. Dax had certainly learned something in their time apart, but exactly what that was she had no idea.

Kat came to the window and rolled her eyes. Seriously? Pitchforks and torches?

“If I’m the monster that makes you Dr. Frankenstein.”

She turned away from the window and headed for the bedroom to grab a backpack and stuff a few things in. Jedi were used to traveling light so she mostly focused on taking food and water.

She wasn’t at all sure about taking the child with them. Kat did not trust easily.

Hawk Hinata