Relative to the Position of the Observer

[Vereshin]

Hung Up - Madonna​

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"Go now, slaughter them!" Vereshin commanded Leira, feeding his presence in the Force through her. While he held the guards in front of her with telekinesis, he pushed her forward, sending her out on his leash through the Force towards them.

Vereshin's focus was occupied with freezing the guards and he could not control Leira at the same time, so he had to momentarily allow her to fight at her own will. Having chosen to test her obedience, he stood back and waited for her to see the task through, the results of which were not in his favor. However, before he could bark another command at Leira, the young woman turned around and kicked him square in the groin with her armored boots. Vereshin fell to his knees in rage. With one hand wrapped around his delicate regions, he planted the other in the sand and sputtered.

"You little queen!" Vereshin shouted, facing the ground. Pain ran through the lower part of his body, paired with outright embarrassment and a very urgent desire to annihilate Leira on the spot. As she motioned to kick him in the head, he rose to his feet and shot both hands forward.

Taking aim at Leira, Vereshin belted violet lightning from his palms, just as she turned and ran away. Furious, he hurled the lightning and ran after her. The electricity soared in Leira's direction as she ran across the desert, while objects began to freeze in mid-air. The lightning Vereshin was casting, the guards and the grains of sand which rolled across the dunes, all froze in space. Leira was the only thing that continued to move, as though everything around her had stopped in time.

- - -​

Beneath the shade of a structure which had been unearthed years ago, Vereshin watched the past unfold as the effective present. He saw himself, a recently promoted Sith Lord, chasing after a young girl as he tried to electrocute her. It had been the last time he had seen Leira before he had attempted to separate them both with the black hole. Now he was back there, in the past, as Leira ran from his fury and into the desert. Resting a hand against the metal ring, he waited like a specter lost in time for the Leira from the past to collide with the future. The objects around Leira suddenly began to move again and the guards looked at each other, stunned and lost in confusion.

Vereshin maintained his distance. He could not risk his past self seeing him, or it would override him in time. When Leira was well and truly out of his reach, Vereshin, the real Vereshin, quickly aparated into a raven, which flew across the sand after Leira. It swooped down and knocked her over with it's beak, then reformed into Vereshin, who grabbed her by the shoulders. They rolled over in the sand, with Vereshin falling beside Leira on the ground and keeping her safely out of reach from his past self. He could hear him, cursing and hurling lightning across the sand.

"Leira, we need to get out of here." Vereshin warned and grabbed Leira's arm. Yanking her to the side, he pulled her away from the shadow of his past self and ran back to the Imperial outpost.

"I'll explain everything in time!" He shouted, running across the sand.

While the version of himself in the past quickly gave up, Vereshin lead Leira around the structure and back to the outpost, which looked exactly as did when the Sith had occupied Navrozh all those years ago. With Leira's arm in his hand, Vereshin darted to the bay area, where soldiers and Sith personnel were at their posts, many of whom recognized him, but he assumed they just thought that he was the Sith Lord who had left on a mission a few hours ago, rather than himself from the future. An officer saluted him and Vereshin forced a smile.

"Ah, Lord Vereshin, good to see you back from your mission." The officer said, none the wiser that the Vereshin he was referring to was still out in the desert.

"Yes, yes, now get me my ship." Vereshin demanded, dismissing the officer's greeting with a wave of his hand. "Immediately." He said and the officer saluted again, then went away immediately to bring Vereshin's ship into the hangar bay. Once the officer was gone, Vereshin slumped his shoulders and sighed, his hand still wrapped tightly around Leira's arm. Releasing a long breath, he let her go, then motioned to a bench at the side of the wall, where he sat down and swiped a cigarette from his little silver case.

The air conditioning in the outpost was a welcome change from the heat and he was not sweating so heavily underneath his overcoat. Holding the cigarette between his teeth, he snapped his fingers and lit the end with a spark of electricity, then inhaled and blew a puff of smoke into the air. He adjusted his bowtie and looked up to see Leira standing above him, her arms folded. She did not look amused and rightly so, she had just seen two of Vereshin in the same place.

"What you just saw was me in the past, Leira." Vereshin began to explain, although he assumed that he would not have enough time to get into the scientific details of the situation before his past self showed up. "I came here from the future." He said plainly, giving a raise of his arched eyebrow. "You and that version of me that you've been with up until now, are both occurring in the past, relative to my position." He explained, pointing to the door, where his past self would most likely turn up any minute now. As far as Leira was observing, she was still in the present, along with the version of Vereshin she had just been with, but from Vereshin's perspective, they were both in the past.

Vereshin sighed and parted his mouth in a reassuring smile, then brought the cigarette to his lips. He knew that Leira was going to have many questions. Reaching into his pocket, he found his watch, which he flipped open to read the time.

"Any minute now." He said.

[member="Leira Rhys"]

 

[Leira Rhys]

A deep violet radiated from the eyes of the young girl, her mind completely bonded through the force to her masters'. Rage seared in the back of her mind at this utter lack of control she had over her own body which made her simply a spectator to her own actions, which was twisted through Vi's will into the form of pure violence at the guards he commanded her to attack; Brutality had become Leira's only way of self-expression. Though the child had no true desire to harm the guards, she fantasized about the day when the only master she had to bow to was herself. Her fury would then be directed to the one who had earned it.

With her small hands wrapped so tightly around her vibrosword that her knuckles turned white, she cut through guards as though they were butter, cries of passion escaping her lips as she felt the instrument glide through flesh and bone, splotches of crimson painting her porcelain skin. In the next moment, a switch flipped. Her head pounded for a moment, as her consciousness returned. Feeling as though she had been abruptly awoken from a hazy dream, she felt the slippery blood on her hands, the balmy feeling of sweat on her face, the pounding heat upon her shoulders and quickly realized that she had been, once again, used as a weapon under the influence of Vi. Her eyes darted to him. Upon seeing him, the confusion she felt a split second ago was turned to the rage she felt prior. Leira wasted no time. She planted her armored foot into the sorcerer's groin, before making a break for it.

And then everything stopped. The guards froze, the wind ceased to blow, the mauve bolts of lightning suspended in the air. She was all that remained in motion.

------

The still and quiet didn't last long; It never did. It had only taken a blink of Leira's eyes for everything to catapult back into motion. Vereshin stood behind her once more, his face contorted in rage, but he was no longer on his knees. He stood upright, as strong as he had ever been, as though she had never retaliated against him at all. There was hardly any time for her to take in the change, she was sprinting as soon as she was oriented, as it was all she knew to do in the moment. She felt a white hot pain in her arm; Something sharp hit her with such force that her small body toppled to the ground, out of Vi's reach. She felt the grain texture of sand in her throat, coughing and sputtering for a moment until she felt the pressure of two familiar hands resting on her shoulders. Leira snapped her neck around, seeing Vereshin. Her lips parted in shock, eyebrows pinching together to form an expression that could only be described as utter disbelief. She was yanked to her feet before she could say anything, being promised an explanation in time as she was practically dragged to the bay area. He uttered a few sharp words to one of the Sith officers before releasing her arm, which Leira defensively jerked back to her side, rubbing the area he had been so tightly grasping.

Leira watched Vi go through his routine of catching his breath, sitting, and lighting a cigarette while she stood there, arms crossed, brow furrowed with indignation. After he finished talking, Leira sat down across from him, the anger and confusion in her eyes unfaltering.

"Why?" Leira asked, crossing her legs and leaning back. Leira required logic to everything, a reason. What perplexed her so greatly was that, there didn't seem to be a reason to her, or at least not one in plain sight.

 

[Vereshin]

Vereshin's pocket watch ticked. Having calculated the exact point in time when his self in the past would appear, he counted the seconds intently, and spared the time of explaining the details of the situation to Leira, who stood above him with arms crossed. He swiped off his round, black sunglasses and slid into them into his pocket, then brought the cigarette to his lips and inhaled, drawing in a long breath as Leira creased her brow in clear anger. Releasing a cloud of smoke into the air, Vereshin sighed again and took another look at his watch, then raised his head to face Leira. She questioned him with a single word, a jab at the entirety of the situation with the weight of the very question which he could not answer.

Withdrawing a breath, Vereshin exhaled in a long sigh, smoking billowing out of his mouth and nose. He had traveled back in time precisely as a result of Leira steering his ship into a black hole, but that had not happened yet and Leira had no idea that eventually, she would try and kill him, which was the very reason for him planning to travel through time in the first place. Hanging his head, he rested his hands limply on his knees with the cigarette between his fingers.

"I can't tell you." Was all Vereshin said. His voice was hoarse, strained under the weight of Leira's impossible question. Although he could not tell her why he had traveled through time, he could tell her how and he would regale his methods once he had dealt with the issue of his past self. His watch ticked and he looked down to read the time, then turned around to see the version of himself from the past walking towards the outpost. Quickly, he rose to his feet and rushed past Leira, beckoning her to follow. "Quickly now, I'll explain all I can once we're on the ship." Flicking the cigarette into a waste paper bin, Vereshin rushed to the hanger bay with Leira behind him.

The officers brought his ship into dock and he darted towards the landing ramp. Gesturing towards the deck, he ushered Leira on board, while he waited by the ramp for his past self to appear. The doors to the hangar bay slid open and Vereshin, the Vereshin from the past appeared. The real Vereshin stood in front of the ship with Leira behind him and held out his pocket watch. When he hit the timer, the hands began to tick backwards, beginning the process of aligning his past self with the correct flow of time. He raised a hand, the pocket watch in the other and extended his reach in the force through his past self.

"Frame of prior reference, heed the hands which I present." Vereshin said, inserting his telekinetic reach into the frame which he past self occupied. Projecting his voice clearly, the spell resounded off the walls of the hangar as he lured the apparition to the hands on the watch. The past version of Vereshin froze, blind where he stood and capable only of seeing the watch, which Vereshin used to divert his attention from himself. "By the rate at which they proceed, fall in line with how they turn and rekindle the bond we once shared." Vereshin said, binding the apparition to the watch and using it to reset his place in time. As he spoke, the particles making up his past self began to dissipate and the frame in which it stood slowly moved backwards.

"Slide behind the frame from where I observe thee, discard the future as it has been foretold." Vereshin said, inserting the frame behind his own point in time, placing it in it's accurate position in the past. The past version of himself began to fade, forgetting that he had seen his future self. "For the future is relative only to where I stand." Splaying his hand against the air, Vereshin grabbed the frame and slid it back, re-aligning in accordance to his own position in time. The past version of himself disappeared, breaking the force bond between Leira and himself in the process. As the previous version of Vereshin moved backwards in time, to the frame where he belonged, Leira would experience the bond between her and Vereshin lifting, freeing her from his mental control.

Vereshin, as he had appeared on Navrozh six years prior, disappeared from time. The past version of himself faded, having thankfully not erased his present, correct self from time. With a sigh of relief, Vereshin clicked the pocket watch and set his passage of time flowing normally, for now at least, until his frame of reference was displaced again. Turning around, he brushed past Leira and ushered her onto the ship. The officers prepared for takeoff as they boarded the landing ramp, which closed behind them. After walking onto the ship, Vereshin made his way towards the lounge area, where he sat down and waited for the pilot to take the ship out of the atmosphere.

Strewn across the table where the equations and notes he had been working on at the time the Sith had occupied Navrozh. He looked over them with a gasp of joy, feeling somewhat nostalgic when he thought about the progress he had made since then.

"Ah! My old notes!" Vereshin gasped, holding up a sheet where he had been working out an equation. Taking off his overcoat, he revealed the black, knitted vest he wore underneath and loosened his bowtie. He lay his coat aside and sifted through the scores of functions he had spent years trying to derive, before he finally succeeded in travelling through time, thanks to Leira. The thought prompted a smile from him and he looked up at Leira happily, feeling almost grateful that she had steered his ship into a black hole. He reclined on the lounge and lit another cigarette, which he puffed away on and looked at the ceiling, waving a hand in Leira's direction.

"Sit down, Leira." Vereshin offered, not in a commanding way, but in the manner of a genuine invite. He took off his shoes and put his feet up on the lounge, with an elbow resting on the table. A pause followed as he waited for Leira to sit down if she wished.

"I succeeded in travelling through time." He said, the tone of his voice lowering slightly. As the ship left the atmosphere, the windows turned dark, giving way to the void of space which lay ahead. "That's why you saw another me, because I came here from the future." Vereshin began to explain and shifted, sitting up straight. He sifted through his notes in search of an equation which he could use to explain things more simply to Leira, but most of the problems were out of date and could not accurately describe the process. "That other me was in the past, where you are, but only according to me." Leaving the notes aside, he sat up with his cigarette in hand and took a drag.

"From your point of view, we are in the present, because you were already here, but from where I'm standing, we are in the past, because I traveled here from a later point in time." Speaking slowly, Vereshin presented the details of the situation as clearly as he could manage. He did not doubt that Leira would find it confusing, but he attempted to make it easier for her to digest by avoiding getting into the mathematics. A pause followed as he gave Leira a moment to think about what he had said.

"Because what we constitute as the past, present and future depends entirely on our position in time." Vereshin said and brought the cigarette to his lips, then blew smoke into the air. Reclining, he started up at the ceiling and allowed for a further pause. "It's all relative to where you're standing." He said.

[member="Leira Rhys"]

 

[Leira Rhys]

"I can't tell you"

Leira's eyebrows creased in resentment, as it was often that Vereshin seemed to be caught up in some plan that forced their paths to intertwine, yet she was often kept in the dark. "Of course," She muttered lowly, before he hurried her on board the ship with an air of urgency about him. Endearment bit at her mind that she fought off; As much as she tried to convince herself that she despised the sorcerer that had ruined her life, his manic brilliance intrigued her. As the hangar bay doors glided open they revealed the other Vereshin. Though she already knew there were two of him, her eyes darted from one to the other with disbelief. The shine of the metal pocket watch caught her eye. With all her attention on Vereshin, she watched his thin lips part and recite his spell. Just like that, the past Vereshin's eyes were affixed to the watch, his physique frozen in it's tracks. The real sorcerer tinkered with his watch, delivering the remainder of the spell. With a wave of a hand, the old dissipated in front of them. Leira felt a wave of dizziness wash over her, her vision becoming hazy for a few seconds before clearing up. Becoming oriented once again, she recognized the clarity; She was free of the force bond. If her judgement was weaker, she would've sprung on the impulse to run away and start a life as her own master. Her curiosity held on to her like a leash though, the concept of time travel being too captivating to walk away from. Besides, it was futile. He could effortlessly bind their force signatures together again. And, even if he did lose her, he could turn back time and capture her once more.

Though, for the moment, Leira desired nothing more than the understanding that he could offer her.

"That could've killed you," She said, having sensed his earlier unease.

"Err, not killed, I guess. But it only makes sense that if you mess with the past, the present you would have changed, therefore making the you you are now... gone."

As the ship became enveloped in the obsidian span of space, Leira sank down into the seat across from him. She glanced through the equations, wishing that she was privileged to an education that would allow her to understand what the ink scrawled across the pages meant. As he spoke she listened intently, her green eyes intense and locked on him.

"Everything's a matter of perception, then," She said, fidgeting with the edge of a page, "If you reverse time and... change things to be more preferable, what happens to the old future? Would you cease to exist, because the reality you come from changes, or would there simply be different versions of reality? Or is reality just what you perceive it as?"

[member="Vereshin"]

 

[Vereshin]

In the moment his past self returned behind to it's proper position in time, Vereshin felt a sense of completeness, his bond with Leira now broken and his mind free. The watch began to tick again, turning past the point where his past had re-aligned with his present. With the watch held firmly in his hand, he lowered his arm with a sigh of deep relief and slid it back into his pocket. He turned and walked past Leira, who exclaimed that the spell could have killed him. There was a slight hint of concern on her voice, making Vereshin think that he had indeed succeeded in changing the past, but he would not know for certain until they day came when he was sucked into the black hole, if that did ever happen again. With his head lowered, he walked past Leira with his hands in his pockets and simply shrugged.

"If my past self had seen me first? Yes." He nodded, stopping just before the landing ramp. He looked at Leira through his round sunglasses and groaned slightly, knowing that she wanted an answer. "It could have erased me from time, but I dragged it's frame of reference backward and inserted it behind the frame which I presently occupy." He said, fumbling around in his pocket for a cigarette. Turning around, he walked onto the ship with Leira following behind him and the ramp ascended, locking them inside. As they stepped into the docking bay, the engines surged into gear and took the ship out of the outpost. As they walked to the lounge area, Leira asked more questions, which Vereshin put aside until he made himself comfortable. He sat down and lit another cigarette, then took off his sunglasses and flung them aside, along with his coat.

When Leira spoke again, Vereshin halted, somewhat impressed with the truth in her words. Indeed, the process of re-aligning his past would affect the way his present unfolded, but however, that's exactly what Vereshin wished to achieve by travelling back in time. He took off his bowtie and set it on top of his overcoat, then took off his boots and put his feet up on the lounge, then called a servant on the intercom.

"Correct, altering my past will inevitably change the way my future unfolds." Vereshin said, reclining on the lounge. His voice was muffled by the cigarette hanging from between his teeth, which he lit with a snap of his fingers. Swiping it out of his mouth, he blew smoke into the air and leaned over the table, looking at his old notes. A pause followed as he sat upright, turning his head slightly to give Leira a wry glance. "But, that is exactly what I meant to achieve by traveling to the past in the first place, I want to change what happens to me in the future." He said, failing to hint at the reason why he wanted to change his future, it was because Leira was going to try and kill him. By lifting the force bond, he had already succeeded in altering her actions which had yet to unfold, effectively bypassing the moment when she would steer his ship into the black hole.

There was another pause as Vereshin allowed Leira to express her own thoughts on the matter. She was intelligent, he would give her that and he suddenly regretted her dislike of him in that moment. When she finished giving him her observation, he only smiled, his teeth as black as his knitted vest. The day had been long, he was hungry and uncomfortable from travel and opted to discuss things with Leira in more depth once he had refreshed. Rising to his feet, he walked towards the door to the dining area, where the servants would bring them dinner and beckoned Leira over with a nod.

"Why don't we talk about this over dinner?" Vereshin offered, the ends of his mouth kinked upwards in a smile. "I'm starving and I have to piss." He groaned, having not had a chance to rest since he left confederacy space.

A young mage ran into the lounge area and neatly folded Vereshin's coat, which he bundled up with his shoes, sunglasses and bowtie, then left to take them into his quarters. Vereshin left Leira to rest a while herself, before walking through the dining area and exiting into the quarters which housed his bedroom and refresher. His desk was still there, and strewn with notes and all his old clothes were where he left them. Still sighing, he pulled his feet into the bathroom and urinated, practically singing to the tune of sweet relief as he stood above the toilet. He went to the sink and quickly splashed his face with cold water, then slicked back his hair and continued to sing as he walked into the dining area, where two meals had been set out for Leira and himself. She arrived from the opposite side of the room and joined him at the table.

"You're clever, Leira." Vereshin said and sat at the head of the table. Laying before him was a bowl of pumpkin soup, which he stirred gently and blew on to cool, then took a sip. "Yes, the passage time depends entirely on the position of the observer, what is the present for you, is the past for me." He said, mixing in some sour cream with his soup. There was a glass of wine beside his bowl, which he sipped lightly between mouthfuls. "I'm impressed that you understand that, at least on a conceptual level, at your age." He said, eating another spoonful of soup. Leira's question regarding his future and how it originally unfolded intrigued him and he looked forward to giving her his answer. She was interested in his work and that made Vereshin happier than anything, even if she had been a pain in his backside for the most recent years of his life.

"The future, in itself, doesn't really exist in the first place." Vereshin began to explain, speaking slowly so that Leira could take in what he was saying. He waved his spoon around as he spoke, licking off soup between words. "Because when it's happening, it's not really the future, but the present, so there's no way of knowing what the future really holds, as the number of paths it can take is infinite." He said, then took a sip of wine to wash down his soup. While Leira had done well to form her question, the answer was more simple than what she might have expected, as there was no way of knowing what the future was anyway. Since Vereshin was in the past, what he perceived as the future used to be the present, as he traveled back to before it had happened, so even he did not know what the future, the correct future entailed.

"So that means the point in time from where I traveled was really the present, as I am in the past now." He said, stirring his soup. From Leira's point of view, it was the future, as she had not experienced it yet. By altering the past, Vereshin would change the present, effectively erasing the events there from time, but that was what he wanted to do. "But you are correct in saying that the present, prior to me traveling to the past, will be effectively bypassed." He nodded and sipped his wine. As the future could take on infinite paths, the present, prior to Vereshin travelling backwards in time, would inevitably unfold in a different way, depending on how he altered what came before.

[member="Leira Rhys"]

 

[Leira Rhys]

As Vereshin spoke and began to reveal his intentions to change his reality, Leira then had another question, but one she knew Vi would refuse to answer: What did he so badly, that he would be willing to risk his entire existence being nullified, want to change? Something must have gone terribly wrong for him to put all the scientific accomplishments and knowledge he had accomplished in his life on the line. The question would lay dormant in her mind for the moment, as she knew asking it would do little but annoy the sorcerer, but silently promised herself that someday she would find the answer unless it revealed itself to her.

Leira looked up from the page she was glancing over and caught Vereshin's gaze. He looked delighted to be able to share the efforts of his probably long hours of manipulating the Force, working through mathematical equations and running tests. In a way, it was his life's work. For once, Leira felt she understood where he was coming from; Holding such a complex and extraordinary discovery in his brain with nobody but his pages to rattle on about it to would be a lonely life. She was glad that they shared this knowledge of the that time travel was possible and, even, a reality.

Their conversation temporarily concluded when Vereshin dismissed her to her chamber, promising to further indulge her curiosity over dinner. She pulled herself up from her seat, running a hand through her hair; Her forehead was sticky with sweat, her hair tangled with pieces of sand. Leira couldn't remember the last time she had showered. Everything was a bit hazy since she experienced the shift and time seem warped; She was unsure if this effect was caused by placebo due to knowing time had been tampered with or if her day was lengthened, as the first part of her day was in a different frame of reference than she was currently in. She supposed it didn't matter, though, as not much changed for her except perception. There was a lingering edge of unease, though, as Vereshin quite literally held her future in his hands. She hadn't a clue how Vereshin was able to manipulate the Force in such ways. If she did something he disliked, or escaped him, he could simply snatch her out of the future and alter reality.

Leira turned the shower knob, putting the water on as hot as she could, before quickly undressing and slipping in. She scrubbed the dirt off her body, being careful not to press down too hard on any bruises or reopen any scratches or cuts she had amassed. After she finished washing and picking pieces of dirt out of her hair, she stepped out onto the cool tile. She used her hand to wipe steam off the mirror, which revealed her reflection staring back at her. Her hazel eyes sagged with fatigue, her resting face cold and solemn. Leira felt the anger that she had almost constantly felt creep back into her mind as she was, once again, reminded of what Vereshin had made her do. The memories flooded back into her head; Suddenly her chest hitched with fast breaths, her vision became blurry, her legs felt like they were going to fall from under her. Wrapping a small hand around the doorknob, she flung herself into the cool air of her bedroom. A lump formed in her throat, causing every inhalation to be painful as tears formed in her eyes as she was enveloped by thought and panic. The palm of her hand met her mouth to muffle her sobs, refusing to let Vereshin ever know the trauma that had resulted from that day at the orphanage. Though it wasn't her fault, Leira felt the weight of the lives that her hands had taken under Vi's control all on her shoulders at once. In the next second Leira had her vibroknife in her hand and without turning it on she quickly ran it across her forearm, the sharp pain jolting her from her panic and flashback to reality. The hyperventilation slowed until it matched her regular breathing pattern, the oxygen returned to her brain and the dizziness wore off.

Realizing what she'd done, Leira took out her roll of gauze and tightly bound the cut in it, before sharply ripping it off and sealing the bandage. She hated herself for being so weak as to allow herself to waste time on panicking, the new mark on her arm a reminder of her brokenness. As she dressed herself, she found herself fighting back more panic, as the uncomfortable fact that she was possibly forever tied to Vi lingered in the back of her mind. The small shred of hope that she held on to was that, someday, when she was stronger, she could escape and if she was lucky, stop Vereshin from hurting more people. This option was now eliminated by Vi's ability to change the course of action; That was, unless Leira herself figured out how to do it for herself.

After towel drying her shaggy blonde hair, Leira came to dinner, sitting herself at the end of the table as usual. A bowl of warm pumpkin soup was laid before her, which she gratefully dug her spoon into as she listened carefully to what Vereshin said in an attempt to, at least, vaguely understand the abstract concept. She couldn't help but feel somewhat flattered when Vi complimented her intellect, but was resolved to not allow anything to distract her from her goal.

"Does anything really matter, then?" Leira said, after swallowing a spoonful of her soup, "You can change whatever you'd like, at any given moment. There's no continuity. Something, no matter what past you decide to tamper with to alter the present, will go terribly wrong. And then you'll be back where you were previously, trying to correct events so that you get a desired outcome.." She took another sip of her soup, tapping her fingers on the side of the bowl in thought, "You're smart enough to have already thought through this all, though, so obviously you have to decide for yourself what's worth going back for and there must be something specific you want in each case. That leads me to wonder what exactly it is that you want. but I'm assuming if you tell me what you want to happen, it won't happen."


"Has anyone else ever utilized this power, or is it just... you? If multiple people had this ability I can imagine it would get chaotic, as the present would be changed multiple times by multiple people, leading to nothing being concrete, so I assumed you were the only one."

[member="Vereshin"]

 

[Vereshin]

With a sigh, Vereshin made himself comfortable in his chair and stirred at his soup, taking sips of wine between mouthfuls. When Leira arrived, his eyes were immediately drawn to the bandages poking out from beneath her sleeves, but he decided to wait until after their conversation to mention them. The insolent young girl sat at the side of the table, where another bowl of soup had been placed before her, her eyes occasionally crossing with Vereshin's own as he allowed for a moment of pause, before he spoke. Leira then asked him if anything really mattered, since he had the ability to alter the passage of time as he pleased, meaning that his perception of it, as well as her own, was essentially meaningless. After taking a sip of soup, Vereshin set down his spoon and poised his fingers, sitting on the taste in thought.

"No." Was all Vereshin said. There was a further pause as the ends of his mouth kinked upwards into a smile, before he rested an elbow beside his bowl and drummed his fingers on the table, enjoying Leira's gentle pressing of his worldly views. "Nothing really matters." He said to her, taking a sip of his wine.

"The Sith will tell you that attaining perfection through means of victory is the pinnacle of achievement for a human being, it's bullchit." Vereshin said, stirring sour cream into his soup. He ate a mouthful and set down his spoon, then took a long sip of wine to swallow his thoughts. Ever since he had entered their ranks, he had continuously found himself at odds with the Sith code, which he had since discarded in it's entirety. When Leira pressed the topic of his manipulation of time, he recoiled and leaned back in his chair, becoming increasingly bothered by the problem he was trying to solve and here she was rubbing it in his face. Time, in it's natural state, proceeded in a continuous flow, which Vereshin had outright disrupted, having created a paradox of his own existence.

Suddenly, the temperature of the room dropped. Vereshin's signature in the Force seethed with all it's fury, it's pull emanating the black hole he came out of. He sat with his fingers entwined above his bowl of soup and slowly turned to face Leira, his lime green eyes glowing as his power came to a head. Without lifting a finger, he wrapped the force around her neck and tightened it, threatening to snap it if she questioned him any further. He downed the remainder of his wine and rose to his feet, his telekinetic hold still wrapped around Leira's neck. With his soup unfinished, he walked around the table to her chair, then stood above it and faced her. She was correct in her assumption, something in Vereshin's future would go terribly wrong, but he would not allow her to enjoy it while she was in his presence.

"You are the constant I cannot change." Vereshin said coldly. With a wave of his hand, he released his hold on Leira's neck and slammed her head onto the table, allowing her to breathe again. The sorcerer swished around, muttering aloud to himself as he fumbled for a cigarette. He slid one between his teeth and snapped his fingers to light it, only to realize that he could no longer cast photons, which meant that he could not produce lightning. "Kark!" He cursed, continuously snapping his fingers to create a spark, but to no avail. He spun around and looked at Leira, staring her down with all the cruelty in the galaxy.

"Get me my lighter." He hissed and pointed to the door leading to his bedroom. When Leira obeyed, she would be faced with the mess in his bedroom, where she would have to shovel over clothes and notes to find Vereshin's cigarette lighter.

While Leira was gone, Vereshin left the dining room and walked into his study, where he sat at the piano. Leira would return to find him idly playing a mournful tune. The notes soared throughout the ship, conveying all the sadness and frustration of Vereshin's impossible situation. As he stared at the keys, he heard Leira enter from behind him and looked up to find her standing beside the piano. He snatched the lighter from her and took the cigarette from behind his ear, lit it, then slid it between his teeth and inhaled. For a moment, he was content to let her stand there while he played the piano, her expression clearly removed from the mathematical turmoil which was raging inside his mind. The music calmed him and helped him to think, before he played the final note of the tune and let the melody sit on his thoughts for a moment.

Vereshin sat in silence, his head hanging over the piano. In the moments that passed, it occurred to him that Leira had meant no offence by questioning his manipulation of space and time, she was merely a curious child. In truth, she could not possibly contemplate the feat he needed to attain to correct his passage of time, but the very likely possibility that he did not succeed in doing so spurned him, so he had been angry when she had pointed it out. With a sigh, he rose to his feet and walked to the wind0w, where he gazed out over the void of space.

"You discern a fraction of reality." Vereshin said, his tone sounding slightly sad. Indeed, even though Leira was intelligent beyond her years, she was naive and could not possibly fathom the relativistic mess which encompassed Vereshin's existence. "My passage of time is already distorted beyond repair and the only aspect of my life which remains the same is you." He said, following a pause. The reality of his situation hit him harder as the seconds transpired, the fact that he would remain in a time loop for as long as he lived growing ever more apparent as he struggled to reconcile with the facts in Leira's words. If Vereshin was the derivative which could not be solved, Leira was the constant which determined the answer. The process of correcting his passage of time would depend on her as it's point of focus.

"Something did happen in my past that I wish to circumvent, but I cannot tell you what it was." He said, taking a long drag on his cigarette. Turning around, he leaned against the window and stared Leira down, inviting her to sit on the lounge with a tilt of his head. "In order to do so, you must be the point of focus which I use to twist the events of my life in the direction through which they are supposed to proceed." With the cigarette poised rakishly between his fingers, Vereshin squared off a section with his hands as he tried to convey the point of focus Leira would stand in for and how he would use it to correctly angle his frame of reference. He sighed, then walked to the liquor cabinet at the wall. He opened the little glass door and retrieved a bottle of absinthe and a crystal glass, which he filled without any sugar and took a short sip from, wincing at the strong taste.

"But you were correct the first time." Vereshin said forlornly. A pause followed as he sat back down at the piano and sipped his absinthe, his mood becoming increasingly low with the effects of the alcohol. "I am lost in time and there's no way I can ever get out." The time traveler said. He sounded genuinely sad and leaned on the piano, his head hanging over the keys. While Leira was right when she said the process was ultimately repetitive, it was only solution Vereshin had to leading some semblance of a normal life. Until then, he would be haunted by his past and caught in an ever looping spiral of attempting to stop it from repeating itself.

"Rectifying the past is not a complete solution, but it's the only way I can restore some normalcy in my life." Vereshin said, looking at the piano. Everything he had worked for, his research and the mathematics involved, now seemed pointless, for all he had attained, he had ruined his life by doing so. At the mention of Vereshin's power to manipulate time and whether anybody else was capable of it, he simply chuckled. "As far as I know, there are no other Force users capable of manipulating time." He forced a smile and turned around to face Leira, who found herself in a situation which was most likely unique to her. Trust Vereshin to go for the one ability which no Force user had ever dared to touch and now, the consequences made it obvious as to why that was.

[member="Leira Rhys"]

 

[Leira Rhys]

"Nothing really matters."

The words turned the pumpkin soup in Leira's stomach to iron. Though she had already come to this conclusion herself, to hear her own fears relayed to her by Vereshin was a sickening reassurance; She had hoped from him to somehow justify himself, to say that in fact the opposite was true, that he had some complex plan other than just avoidance of an inevitable event. Of course, ever since Leira was a little girl, she knew nothing mattered in a sense that no matter what she did, she would still die, but at least her actions had some sort of permanence. She could improve the lives of others, make a better life for herself, overcome all the trauma and grief and tragedy that had ruined these first years of her life. But no matter what she did, with a spell uttered by Vereshin, it could be erased. She was caught in the sorcerer's loop of escapism from the future. A lump of rage formed in her throat, followed by her muscles tensing with the desire to throw herself across the table and dig her nails into the tender flesh of his eyes.

The air that lay between the two grew dense with tension, the frigidity of Vi's wrath discordant with the blistering heat of Leira's own; She wondered how such a brilliant sorcerer could fail to realize the loop he would doom himself to by his use of time travel. Though a truly astounding scientific discovery, she was furious at him for using it instead of simply keeping it locked away for his and everyone else's own good. Leira's lips parted to chastise him but before any words could find their way from her brain into the air, her breath was cut off. Panic filling her, her hands instinctually went to her neck as if to remove whatever was restricting her, though she knew what was choking her. Her eyes met Vereshin's, his radiant lime green eyes filled with not only fury but fear, shame. Leira realized, in that moment, despite all the hate, the resentment, the anger, that all the two had was one another. She was the one constant he could not change, and he was her constant.

Vereshin released the grip on her neck, slamming her head on the table. Leira's body was seized by a coughing fit, interrupted by desperate gasps for air; She didn't lift her head up from the table, not wanting to allow Vereshin the gratification of seeing the tears pooling up in her eyes threatening to spill down her cheeks. She felt the heat of his bitter glare on the back of her head before he finally spoke again, demanding she get his lighter. Leira took this chance to get a moment away from the sorcerer, jolting up from her chair and pushing it in harshly before wordlessly walking into the sorcerer's bedroom.

Upon entering, she was greeted with clothes amassed atop eachother, sheets of paper with incoherent scribbles strewn across the floor. His room was trashed beyond the normal clutter that a living space would be expected to acquire, the air was stale and tinged with residue of Vereshin's evident depression. She wondered why Vereshin had been so desperate to create time travel in the first place. It couldn't have started as some quest to stop a future event, as he wouldn't have had the knowledge of that as he studied this concept. Though it could be reduced to his unceasing thirst for knowledge, to do things with the Force that had never been done before, she wondered if his past had also been something that he desired to change. She momentarily shoved that concern to the side, cursing herself for being so desperate for a human connection that she'd empathize with somebody so immoral, so selfish, so utterly corrupt. After a few minutes of shifting through the clutter, she found his lighter and found Vereshin in his study, hunched over the piano.

Leira leaned on the door frame, not interrupting his playing by speaking but instead listening to the sorrowful tune with genuine interest. When the song was completed, she simply extended the lighter to him, offering no words. She supposed all he wanted was for her to listen to him; She once again felt the dreaded empathy return to her mind as he explained his dilemma, taking a seat on the lounge when invited to. As she listened she, in a way, could grasp his reasoning, as she herself would be willing to change the tide of time to erase the trauma that she had been dealt. Though logically she would never go through with such a thing, realizing the paradox it would create, she could understand.

"I have things I would like to change too," She said, mirroring his sadness.

"What do you want in life?" The girl asked, her tone gentle, being careful as to not offend him, "I always wanted to... Well, I wanted to learn how to use the Force correctly, maybe join some sort of faction where I can fight for something I really, truly believe in. Make the galaxy a better place. I suppose such sentiments are ridiculous, as life is just naturally an absurd and painful process, but while I'm here I guess it could be a justifiable distraction," Her lips turned upwards in a slight smile,

"I guess the only thing either of us have is eachother, which is kinda funny. We've spent so much time fighting one another despite being in the same dilemma," A few seconds of silence ensued, before Leira finally spoke again,

"Where do we go from here?"

[member="Vereshin"]