Private Not By Chance

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Avalore

Perhaps half a dozen living beings would recognize the mask and mantle of Anger. None of them, at a guess, lived on Sorgan. That made Ashin's getup strange, bizarre even, but not especially significant. Sitting at a corner table with a full mug warming her gloved hands, she got attention out of general wariness, not abject terror.

In theory she could have put aside the furious mask and the black robe, and walked as just another stranger passing through this backwater. But she wore this as a matter of calling, vocation, oath, and destiny. She'd done so even before Spencer's death. Now the guise of Anger felt even more suitable: it stripped her humanity away.

She'd given the public house proprietor a respectable sum in Galactic Alliance currency. A certain girl might come in, maybe summoned for an errand, maybe lured by a rumor. How she came to the Sorgan public house was unimportant.

 

[Avalore]

A boy broke through the door in a flurry, a smirk caught on his lips as he glanced back. Avalore burst through after him, slamming into the metal rail of the door and sending it rebounding away.

"Give it back, Andre!"

He skirted around a table and slowed, his fingers tight on the bag she reached for. He glanced around once, his dark eyes skimming for his father at the bar, before dumping the bag at his feet.

"Come get it, Twiggy." He dropped the empty pack on the discarded belongings. Avalore lunged forward with a growl, his shirt slipping from her finger tips as he side stepped behind the bar.

No one appeared alarmed by the sudden fight. Andre was a known bully in the small settlement and his fights with Avalore were a daily occurrence. Most notably, his father barely looked up from the datapad behind the register. Avalore didn't even bother looking to the man for help.

"You're a grade A jerk, you know that?" She spat out at him, settling for a curse as she knelt down and shoved her things back into her bag one, by, one.

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Old instinct suggested stepping in. A mother, a Jedi, a peacekeeper - she'd been all those things, albeit poorly. Instead she put the full mug aside and turned their way. Her voice bored into Avalore 's head.

<This has happened before and will happen again, unless you act. If you want him to stop, what barriers within yourself keep you from getting what you want? And do you have the will to break them?>

 

[Avalore]

Avalore stiffened, the intrusion seeping through her untrained mind. Her attention pulled up, slow and intentional as stared at the tuff of brown hair appearing over the bar top from her position on the ground.

She didn't possess the mental fortitude to understand the words as anything other than her own. They stirred inside of her, begging a response. What was stopping her from reacting?

<You don't break other people's faces.>

But that was what she wanted to do, images of her taking the mug on the table next to her and sending it smashing into Andre's face flickered through her, like scenes in a holoflick. He'd scream. He'd fall. For once he'd be the one bloody. Her fingers tightened over her bag straps as she zipped it closed.

But then he’d bring in his friends.

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

<If his retaliation depends on allies, scare them, co-opt them, distance them from him, or find allies of your own.>

Avalore

 

[Avalore]

Avalore blinked, her expression growing reserved as she slowly... glanced over her shoulder.

The hairs on the back of her neck rose as she found a set of painted eyes staring back, the stranger at the table turned towards her way. Her brows furrowed, a budding suspicion discarded as soon as it crept to life. Impossible.

She rubbed the back of her neck, saddling on her bag as she stood. Andre turned, his taunting look growing as he remained safely behind the bar with his father.

His ally. Checkmate.

She wavered in place at the entryway, her feet stuck to the ground as someone entered and moved around her like water.

The solution became simple then. Get him out from behind the bar.

But if it was ever that simple, she would have done it long ago. She was small. And alone. No one cared. No one would stand up against the innkeeper or his devilish son.

She was powerless, the sting of a bloody knee adding to her anger. Of course there would be more of those.

<I can’t.>

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

<Identify what stands between you and your desire, then find the crack in the barrier. There are ways, with or without deception, to change his father's stance and perspective. He views these interactions as harmless child's play. To you they are not. Drive a wedge between the boy and his father, and you may find your safety, or at least enough breathing room to pursue better options.>

Avalore

 

[Avalore]

Avalore’s chest rose and fell, the first mental probe made back at the voice that spoke freely inside of her.

<Who are you?> She resisted, biting down on the urge to turn back around.

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

The girl wasn't ready, and that was fine. She'd learn. She had the desire; now she just needed faith in herself.

Ashin stood, abandoning her mug. It wasn't like she'd been using it for anything more than a hand-warmer anyway. Without particular noise or fuss, she stood beside Avalore. Her gaze bored into the proprietor. "I asked you to arrange for the child to come here," she said. "Common sense would suggest you'd keep your boy from tormenting her once my interest became clear."

"Ah...it's just kids and..."

"Her distress is as obvious as his meanness and cowardice. One parent to another, this is not how you raise a good child."

Fury set his face alight. "You think you can come into my place and tell me how to raise my son, freak? Get the kark out. OUT."

Ashin turned and headed for the door. Lethal escalation boiled up in her heart, but she kept a lid on it. She'd spooked the girl enough for one day. "With pleasure."

<For your purposes, Avalore , you could consider me a Sith Lord. And I left out one option: you have the power to leave.>

 

[Avalore]

Avalore’s head whipped to and fro, caught between the inn keepers anger and the stranger that had stood at her side.

She hadn’t been kicked out, but that didn’t stop her from running after the woman that used magic to speak to her. There were a million questions, but one came forward easier than all the rest.

“How do you know who I am?” She demand, not letting the masked stranger get far.

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

This particular town was quintessential Sorgan: huts made of hand-hewn timber, steep conical spires on the roofs, all interspersed with trees and trails. Ashin paused under the shade of a tree whose remaining fruit had gone rotten after a careless harvest. Fall was coming -- a season of change, decay, worthwhile things becoming worthless. Like Avalore 's time in this particular backwater.

"There are certain places I go for visions. One of those visions included you. Before I landed on Sorgan I knew you could learn to feel and touch the Force, potentially with real power. Has it manifested for you yet? Sparks of intuition, strange happenings, unusually friendly animals perhaps?"

 

[Avalore]

Her eyes widened in shock, the only part of her to belay the truth as she lied through her teeth.

“Strangers talking in my head count?”

Stress ripples through her body, her palms growing damp as she gripped tighter at her bag straps. Did the woman known then? About what she had done?

“...why?” Came the right question, the girl taking an uneasy step back, ready to run.

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"As it happens, yes, it counts. I can speak to nearly any mind, but someone who can feel the Force can hear more clearly. As for why? Why what? Why do you have this knack? Nobody knows." There was a significantly deeper answer involving the cosmic Force, but now was certainly not the time.

"Why did I come searching for someone with potential? Because every reliable apprentice increases my ability to make the change I wish to see in the universe." Again, there was a deeper answer involving her wife's murder and a small ongoing vendetta with the Sith Empire.

"Why did I pick you of the hundreds of thousands of Force-sensitives roaming the galaxy? Because you understand pain, need, desperation, anger. You can learn from a place of authenticity that so many spoiled little princes could never access."

Avalore

 

[Avalore]

And yet the stranger had walked away from her.

Avalore rocked in place, her eyes darting to and fro as her sheltered world became that much more complex. To her credit, she didn’t falter. She remained firm before the Sith Lord, mental wheels turning as she pieced together their encounter.

“Are you leaving?” Came the loaded question, her curiousity restrained but the feared bite of rejection.

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"Of course. I have a good deal to do on planets much more interesting than this one. You should be asking a different question: do you have the courage to take a step into a larger world and come along? Understand that you'll encounter people and situations much more frightening than you've known before, but I promise I will give you the tools to grow stronger than all of them."

Avalore

 

[Avalore]

So that was why she cared.

Avalore had struggled to see the woman’s investment. Why would she care about the squabble of children? Why would she want her to fight back?

It had been a test. And she had failed.

Heat filled her check, a wash of anxiety flaring in her gut. “Yes,” she insisted at once, a step forward taken to reclaim ground. “I’m not scared of him. Nor you and that stupid mask.”

“Take it off.”

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

A genuine chuckle bubbled up, to Ashin's deep surprise. The good mood lasted all of five seconds - an eternity, these days. She took the mask off.

"Now before we go, there's something you need to do for yourself."

She reached up and snapped a small branch off one of the nearby trees. The autumn leaves burst into flame. She held out the branch for Avalore to take.

"And to show me you mean what you say."

 

[Avalore]

Avalore looked at the branch, the fire playing in her wide eyes as it was held out to her. How did she- Right.

The encounter turned serious, the maybes solidifying into follow through as the woman held out the stick.

Oh, came the shocked, rippling in her gut. This was real.

Her thoughts tore from the fire, her gaze dragging back up to the face that had been revealed, searching for intent. The woman didn’t look cruel, just... tired. Her actions had belayed more care than many ever had, earning a spark of investment from the girl that considered her offer.

Could she do it? Could she afford not to?

This will continue until you stop it. She took the branch, no guilt felt for the sister she’d leave behind.

“Ally?” She requested of the woman, the initial problem remaining.

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"You can trust that the fire will burn. And you can trust yourself to act in spite of fear. The fire and your own will are the only allies you can predict and rely upon. Go do whatever you need to do. I'll be right here."

Avalore

 

[Avalore]

Her nostrils flared. “But you said find friends!”

It might be clear then why she hadn’t struck back before, and why she had been willing to now. She was small, disproportionately so. Small and weak and so very easy to over power. There was fear there. She slashed the stick through the air in agitation, not accepting Ashin Cardé Varanin ’s words.

“I don’t stand a chance, he’ll beat me to a pulp again!”