Over That Forceful River To the Goddesses (Valik or PM)

[Yasha Cadera]

Grief is a confounding condition of sentient beings. Whomever one pretends or displays themselves as, grief does sneak up and bite - in its way. [member="Mikhail Shorn"] and I left Annaj behind shaken and shorn up by the precious seconds of bliss we've found inside each others' lives. It's a conundrum of an alliance: One of affection and mutual flippancy of direction and somewhere along the months since our first meeting it gained a strength akin to my lover's Phrik armour. I leave Mikha in bed and pad out of the Sumatiyara's main bedroom as I often do when it's late of cycle and my mind is troubled.

Troubled.

Scant syllables wrapped around the helix of events spun into and out of motion by my rising weight gain and penchant for pickles. I pull a chersilk shawl across my thin shoulders and walk toward my chapel and enter the small remodelled bedroom to see Bucket lighting incense for the holder by the Goddess Shiraya. "Saying your midnight prayers, Bucks?"

"Mmmh. Felt right, what with Tus all broken and Tyr all being put back together. Told them... promised that I'd come. It stupid for a Droid to have faith in something, Boss?" I look Bucket over, the ill fitting of his suit over metal plates, the way his one eye socket whirs and whorls as he looks at me, evaluating seventy six different physical markers to calculate into a knowledgeable qualification on how I am and I see the droid companion for what he is: artificial life.

Life, nonetheless. I put my hand on Bucket's shoulder and rest my temple against my hand. "Tyr and Tus still have their bits. They'll be back in working order quick as a jiff. . . prayers help. They always help. I'm proud of you, Bucket. You've come a long way from a piece of stock from Jared's shelves."

"I'm just a machine."

"We're all machines depending on the definition." I smile and I feel the droid's shoulder rotors releasing, arms lowering an inch or two. The equivalent of a droid-sigh. "Want some company, Boss?"

"[member="Rave Merrill"] disappeared today. She's not coming back." My lips quirk, I feel the wellspring pooling up over my eyelids and I smile with a closed mouth as I light four sticks of incense and put them in the handcrafted metal bowl under the statue of the Goddess of Compassion. "Couldn't claim to be a friend, but I knew her. I grieve her nonetheless. I was there when she fought Circe, she was collected. Calm. A young woman bursting at the seems to relieve the burden of the Kaggath. I'd never seen one before." I sniff and Bucket holds out his hand to help me kneel on a handwoven carpet in the tiny Chapel.

I wove the carpet as I weave my words. This room is my sanctuary and my temple. I clap my hands and slide them over my red silk clad thighs to the thick, scratching carpet beneath. My shawl rests over my hair and I press my forehead to the ground in this, my most private of places.

"Goddess of Compassion I come before you, your daughter. Blessed of your holy providence I come bearing the grief of souls passing beyond the river of your cognizance. Hear me, my heart is heavy. Bear them up to the undying Force, may they find the peace and beauty of compassionate arms.

Guide Rave Merrill on her travels to a life past decision and time. Grant her the peace and the perfection she sought. Shine upon her. Rescue and respite her. May the parting evolve from the bitter end of lost friends to the consolation of pure joy. Carry her, when she cannot carry herself." My voice chokes. My chest heaves. I slide a hand to my stomach and grit my teeth.

"God. . Goddess." I hiss and feel the salt-tang of tears soaking into the woollen carpet. Bucket's servomotors sound and I hear his knee and ankle joints bending until the rustle of his mechanical body kneels beside my frail, human skin. He tugs the shawl back on my head, mechanical hand retreating elsewhere. I gulp down the lump in my throat, my inner gaze pausing on the docile vacancy which fetched Warren [member="Valik"] 's eyes in his lab. His neck goes askew, his body falls as if he'd slipped unceremoniously on the wet ground.

"Oh my Goddess, there aren't enough prayers for this man. Goddess of Compassion, I lift Warren Vali-.. W-warren. I barely knew him. I barely knew him, but he shook me, Holy Mother of Compassion, I cannot find his spirit to offer you, I search and search for him through the Force both Living and Constant and I cannot find him. Rescue him. Dear Goddess, I can't leave him on that floor."

I have more prayers to say, but this? Tonight the ache of Warren's murder is dearest. In the aching silence I hear a whisper. My fingers cling to the fabric covering my torso and I search the whisper for an answer to the disappearance of Valik's soul.

 

[Valik]

Warren Valik, as an unborn child, had no developed eyes, or ears, or nose. But what he did have was the Force, and the ability to read the Empath he lied within. In truth it wasn't so much of his ability to read her as much as it was her ability to project. He could feel her sorrow, her doubt. More than that if he opened his mind he could find images. Scents. Smells even. Valik knew she was an Empath, an empath of empaths even, but it shouldn't have been that natural. Unless? A bond. They were forming a Force Bond. Something he expected to happen with the whole pregnancy thing but so quickly? Unpredictable.

She was distressed. Over his death. Over being unable to find him, or what was left of him. His 'soul' as it were. As if he had one to begin with. If he could heard her conversation with bucket he would have agreed. People were merely machines with different parts, and he had gotten rid of all of the unnecessary programs of emotion.

Intrigued by what she was doing, and why she seemed to have him on her mind he opened his mind, trying to see what was going on. Why did she care so much about him? Why now?

[member="Anders Sivas"]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

I beat my brow with the heel of a palm, the other hand pressed against my soon to be swelling belly. My teeth grit, I groan long and hard into the carpet. The images play again.

Mikhail's murder of Warren [member="Valik"] marks the second time I have been unable to stop Mikhail from an act of unprecedented violence. "I should have stopped him. I should have put Mikhail under. Please, Goddess. Please. Where is he? I can't bring him to life, but I can bring him peace." My hand-hewn sculpture of the smooth-skinned Compassion is silent. Demure of lip and serene of countenance, Compassion's eyelids sweep heavily lidded and peaceful. I pull inward to that piece of myself old dusty monks stared and inspected when I was an androgynous child swinging between personalities like a feather being scattered by contented, smiling children. My fear led to Warren's death.

I want to bring his soul to a land of plenty, an undying berth where his mind can repair - for it was such a broken mind. Warren Valik wasn't the callsign for the insane, but the apathetic - a man of few mysteries and fewer moments of warmth. Nobody should have to die on a cold, wet floor. Not even the slaughterer of the Enteched down in the bowers of his laboratory. Not even for a man of the Sith.

If I can't find Warren. . . My sight pours inward to the embryos in my body. My consciousness pours over them, I inspect and watch cells multiply, feeding off my blood and my spiritual essence as they grow. 'I was weak, kids. I could have saved the man who tried to help me. All I had to do was stand between your father and his anger and I couldn't. He billowed over and I couldn't stand past the current. I have to ask your permission to be tired. Permission to sleep once I've found Warren. I can't be selfish, but we have to reach out and we have to relieve him. Death settles. It carries onward, like your brother carried onward. Like Nabu'enki Hadad. . . I wasn't finished with Warren, kids. I reach my hand to objects and feel their memories. Tai Vordrax, psychometry. Hate to admit it, but I'm no good at it. The images scatter in my brain till my ears bleed. Too many, too far back. Backward and backward until the same whisper held the same sphere in its spectral hand and the same explosion began it. Warren Valik had the most advanced brain I'd felt in my life. Yet he was empty.

No one deserves to die empty. So I'm going to ask you to stay with me as I search. Don't get my stress. Don't die. Don't wither away. I need to understand this. I need to understand him and I need to bring his spirit to the feet of Compassion and let her carry him home. I can't leave him on that floor. I need to restore dignity to the Alchemist.'

I am a living, breathing slit in the Force. A cognizant mind exposed to its flow as the bed of a river is exposed to the water streaking upon it. Control was a myth. Valik gave me the slim chance of controlling not only myself but others and I couldn't take it. I didn't take it. I feel Bucket's hand between my shoulder blades and realize I'm shaking. I open my mind to the bursting channel between myself and my deity, allowing the unborn infants inside my womb to feel the rushing current I always feel, that is never apart from me: the light is glory and overwhelming mercy. It is love, compassion and a powerful regard for life.

It is the Living Force and the smiling aspect of the Living Force: The Holy Mother. The Progenitor of All Things. It is the grace to search for a man who experimented without mercy or regard, for the simple reason that all must receive the chance of blessing at the end of their tasks. Overwhelming, overreaching, unconditional. None can enter this flow and leave unchanged. Mercy unending, for it knows no chaos and no sin. This is the stream in which I exist, the gift to my children. I only hope they can feel the warmth of it and that it protects them as I throw our three essences into the past, riding the temporal flow to shunt into my previous body and watch the death knell of Warren in intimate, microcosmic detail.

Mikhail's fingers curl. The wrist wrenches. Valik's head cants unnaturally to the side. His eyes cloud. I slow the vision down to nanoseconds as the cesspool of life within those deep eyes vanishes. There. Where did it go?

'Where are you, Warren?' I've imprinted off of the dead only once before. Left me sick and shaking for weeks, but I can still pull on the thread and feel Baiko, the Atrisian Archivist. . . if I can find where Warren's gone, I can keep a record of him. I can ensure he is neither forgotten, nor deceased without his works completed.

 

[Valik]

Valik tried to reach out, to listen to what Andra was saying, feeling, hearing, but in the Force one could learn to make waves or read the ripples. Valik had decided to make waves longa go, and his senses were dulled as a result. He got glimpses of what was going on, themes, but ultimately none of the hard data he desired. Until rather than fishing for information it was simply given to him. Andra sent messages to him, and to his 'twin.' She told him that his death was her fault, that she should have contained Mikhail. Amazing to find a kernel of logic amongst all that emotion. Perhaps she had a chance to become something more after all.[SIZE=8.5pt][/SIZE]

Or perhaps not. As Andra continued on she called him 'empty', yet her perception could not be farther from the truth. He had studied species men thought legend, created things people thought as only wild theories, studied concepts so esoteric they couldn’t be perceived by others.[SIZE=8.5pt][/SIZE]

Though that may have simply his hubris talking.[SIZE=8.5pt][/SIZE]

In any case his ‘emptyness’ was a matter of perception, and the woman’s emotions skewed hers more than they should. That was to say, at all. She wanted to find him, find a trace of his life, but for what? Not to preserve his work, to recognize his achievements, but as a form of repentance. In truth she didn’t care that Valik was dead. She cared that she let it happen. That she couldn’t stop it. That it was her fault. In her mind her actions were put to names like “compassion” or “mercy”, but in truth all it was was guilt. Another form of selfishness that she didn’t realize was there. [SIZE=8.5pt][/SIZE]

He’d enjoy helping her discover that secret.

[member="Anders Sivas"][SIZE=8.5pt][/SIZE]

 

[Yasha Cadera]

I push deeper. The vision bursts out the side of my temples, I grimace and clench my teeth. My mind refines its search, slowing down my perspective of time until within the nature of the vision, I can see the second the midnight pools of his eyes grow dim, yet they're not dim as death is dim. They don't end.

Warren Valik's deathmask is one of a conquering prince commanding his domain to be opened to him and it makes me shiver. What a curious face for a man about to die. I've never seen one like it, and the disturbing quandry of where his spirit fled is even deeper within. Bucket destroyed the facility, he blew it into rubble and steam. Whatever Warren went into, it was short lived.

Was it not?

My empathic and mentalist presence veers into Valik's cornea and his mind begins to unfold. I see his medical history begins to display with mended bones, bruises going back to childhood. He did not live a normal, happy life. Nor was he a kind and happy man. Predispositions marred with educated calculations. And yet. . . and yet.

That wasn't all Warren Valik was born to be. Whether through uncannily vicious nurture or a mistake in his genome Warren was missing a strand of compassion and the interplay of emotions as others saw them. "Kids, See this? Wow. I wish I'd have known him as a kid... hey check out how his immune system developed. See how it's fragile after a couple of months? Then it gets stronger over a longer stretch of time? You only see that in infants who lost their mother's milk too soon. . . oh. Oh no. I wonder what happened? He must have lost his Mom. . . I promise I won't die before you two are weaned. I can't guarantee more then that. Mikha doesn't know, but this whole mess. . . it's just me buying time. There's going to come a point when Mikha and I won't be alive to finish raising you two. Mama loves you. I'm going to do my best to ensure that you're both okay. Kinda hard to take, isn't it? You're barely gestating and already I'm counting down my time. It'll be okay. Don't tell your father. . . not that you can. Mikha'd get reeeeallly weirded out by that. . . hold tight. Let's get to know Warren Valik a little better. Memories are next if I can grab the right frequency and the memories are the hard part. I gotta see what work Warren left unfinished."