Private Snake Song

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

So full of adrenaline there'd been no room to feel anything else. It wasn't until almost a half-rotation after Jedha (maybe less, maybe more, it was hard to tell in the wake of exhaustion and star-drifting) that Tansu started to feel more than just exhilaration brightening her nerves. After lying in bed and trying to sleep, she realized she felt hungry.

All that crazy flyin' had really worked up her appetite.

Amos stirred when Tansu got up from the bed, and she put a firm hand between his ears to settle him. He seemed to take the hint and curled right back up. Content to coil up and not start his day yet.

Nobody seemed awake as Tansu crossed from her and Talin's cabin to the galley. She was quiet as a womp rat, careful not to disturb anyone when she crouched to shuffle through the mini refrigerator beneath the auto chef. She didn't want to activate it. It'd be too loud.

But after sorting through a few containers, she regretted her choice.

"Ew, Dax." Nearly anything remotely midnight snack-appropriate was expired. Not the point of smelling sour (she sniffed), but enough to make her hesitate.

Resting back on her heels, she exhaled. Her stomach growled. What she wouldn't give for some cornbread rightaboutnow.

The closest thing she could find was a not-quite-rock-hard nutrient bar. She sat in the galley and munched on that for a bit, resting her head back and letting the day's adventure settle in. It felt good. It felt right. Like leaving behind Concord Dawn wasn't a bad decision after all.

Then, suddenly, she felt nauseous.

She checked the date on the nutrition bar. It still had until the end of the month. That couldn't be it. With her hand on her stomach, she realized it wasn't belly-born nausea. It was something more permeating, miasmic, and heady.

On Jedha, she'd felt a rush of the Force, unlike anything she'd experienced on Concord Dawn. The planet itself was alive and potent, and when they'd swept up Kyric she'd felt a darkness that had made her flinch. Even from the presumed safety of the cockpit. It had only been a taste of the dark side, just a sliver, but she couldn't forget it. That, too, had made her somewhat nauseated.

This felt similar.

Tansu had to relax, lean into The Force's expansion, and find a reason for that unsettling feeling that stirred her insides.Her frown deepened, and she tried to concentrate. Now that she'd felt it, it wasn't hard to find it again. It wanted attention. Like a soft cry from a wounded wampa, it beckoned her. It felt hateful, destructive, and nauseating.

That feeling hadn't always been there, had it? Surely she would have noticed the moment they'd left Castell. Maybe they'd picked something up Jedha? Her chest tightened with a panic grip, and she blinked her eyes open. For sure something nefarious could have boarded the ship and stowed away during Dax's stupid open-to-soon landing gear maneuver. With a start, Tansu peeled from the seat in the galley and followed the aura's whispers.

It wound her through the ship, down to the lower level, and into the cargo bay. It was colder than she remembered, and she shivered as soon as she entered the near-empty compartment. The hollow sounds and evil feeling seemed to narrow to a point, and she followed them, dropping to her knees and placing her hands on either side of an unassuming metal box. It looked nothing special, but inside, it felt powerful.

Just before she opened the box, she felt a tremor of apprehension. But she felt more curious than afraid. The dark vibrations she'd been feeling seemed to swell here. This had to be the source.

With a deep breath, Tansu clicked open the lock on the box.

Inside was the recognizable shape of a lightsaber hilt. It was a short, thick handgrip with a couple of small switches set into the grip. Above the small post was a circular metal disk, barely larger in diameter than her spread palm. A number of familiar jewel-like components were built into both the handle and disk. All these components were prototypical for a lightsaber. It looked just like the composition style of the ones Talin Treicolt had lifted from their parents. In worse shape. It was all scuffed up and well-worn. Almost charred-looking. But it was the power cell that puzzled Tansu the most. There was a sliver of the kyber inside, and it looked……

"...Red?"

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Dax
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​

 

[Dax]

The ceiling looked like it always did; grayscale and filled with steely derision. Each night in which Dax struggled to sleep those durasteel panels stared down at him, indifferent and unchanging. The inanimate serenity they exuded above his restless struggles was a routine source of agitation. It was like the cabin itself was mocking him. He had half a mind to punch a hole in those panels. At least, that's what he told himself to find some comfort against the sleep-deprived delusions of the ceiling's inert jeering. It usually worked, granting a sense of superiority over the insentient that he could ride into half-remembered dreams.

Tonight was different.

There were three strangers aboard his ship, and his head hadn't ceased pounding in hours. Tragically, he'd taken the last of the analgesics on board. They'd hardly helped in the first place. An honest attempt to bring his mind elsewhere only produced the thought of three strangers sound asleep on his ship while he was left to suffer. It nearly broke his patience. Clenched teeth worsened his headache. Writhing beneath the grip of each ache, he begged whatever controlled the universe for sleep. It didn't listen. In retaliation, he cursed that same vague entity for his circumstances. Still, nothing changed. No position, no configuration of his covers, and no amount of counting bantha made any difference. His mind wouldn't sit still.

An exasperated huff escaped his lungs as he sat up abruptly, throwing off the covers with aimless indignation. A thought guarded him against carelessly leaving the cabin. Recalling his lack of solitude, he clothed himself first. Muscle memory would have dictated that he simply strode out and made a beeline for the autochef. Part of him hoped they didn't stay long so he could reconquer the halls with his near-nude treks for late-night snacks. All the while, an oppositional sentiment was finally realizing how lonely he'd been. With a small shake of his head just as it poked through the hole of his shirt, he endeavored to block that thought from his mind. They'd been trouble, as the gash in his head could attest. Plus, BD-9 was all the company he needed.

Right?

Rollers hissed quietly as the cabin door slid open. A glint of blonde disappeared down an access ramp. Dax nearly jumped to see someone else awake, even if they'd immediately disappeared. In his weary stupor, he disregarded it immediately on his way to the galley. Then, several steps later, the peculiarity of one of the twins heading to the cargo bay at this hour finally reached his neurons. A double-take shot toward where the cluster of blondes had disappeared. From deep in his psyche, a pernicious notion he'd been ignoring for months started to rile.

"Oh no," Dax whispered before taking off gingerly, keeping his feet light whilst moving as quickly as he could manage without drumming his heels against the panels. Down the ramp, around two corners and into an alcove of miscellaneous crates, he came before the back of Talin's... or maybe Tansu's figure.

"...Red?"

"What are you doing!?" he blurted, his accusatory timbre entirely involuntary.

Tansu Treicolt​

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

A noise of surprise hopped out of her, and she almost dropped what she was holding.

She rotated on her heels to look at the silhouette in the doorway. It had to be Dax. His appearance had been so sudden.

"I.." How many times had she been caught up to no good back home? Plenty of times. But it was never solo. Talin was always around mischief-making with her, and giving an answer to that question always came readily to at least one of them.

Right now, she wished Talin were here. The other twin wouldn't be stammering. She might, however, be pulling out a pistol and aiming it at Dax again. Tansu didn't think she'd need to wear a holster with her pyjamas. She also didn't think some dark-sided relic would be beckoning her down into the cargo bay late at night.

"This... called? To me? I just followed it and now I'm here. I'm not doing anything."

At home, they'd deflect the accusations. Spin the conversation around until everyone got too confused chasing tails that nobody knew why they were fighting in the first place. So she did that.

"What are YOU doing sneaking up on me? What is this? Is it yours?"

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Dax
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​

 

[Dax]

"What are YOU doing sneaking up on me? What is this? Is it yours?"

"I was-" What was he supposed to say? That he was mad at the ceiling? "...hungry."

After having a blaster pointed in his face, he was more than a little worried about what would happen if they found the cylinder that had been psychically screaming in his cargo bay. It looked like a Jedi's weapon, not dissimilar to what Talin had flashed with pride back on Castell. Whatever it was, though, was far from anything Dax figured would be in the hands of Jedi. If the feeling it gave off wasn't an indicator, the things it said certainly were. It had killed people who didn't deserve it, and it wouldn't mind more.

Equally terrifying as the wailing weapon was the fact that he now had three people on board who could probably hear it.

Dax wasn't too familiar with the Force. He'd heard about it and harbored an inkling that some things he'd experienced, this lightsaber included, had something to do with it. How else would he explain his affinity to nudge outcomes he had no business with? Jedha was a death sentence without it. Not to mention his fire. Even so, it had mostly brought trouble, just like his new passengers. Thus, he'd opted to ignore it, to lock it away in the deepest bowel of the cargo bay. Something he couldn't do to the Treicolts and their cousin. Out of sight, out of mind.

Not a luxury he could afford anymore.

"I-" His hesitation was tangible. "I found it." A more truthful reply would have been that it found him. He knew better, but he didn't wish to spring it to life by acknowledging it. The implications frightened him deeply.

"You really shouldn't be down here, going through my stuff."

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

"You found it? Where? How do you find something like this?" The twin parroted and stood up. She was still holding it in her hands, turning it over as if the thing itself might tell her the truth. It could. Her mother had taught them psychometry. This seemed like something where that trick would prove useful.

But truth be told, she was scared of it. Reading something that felt this malevolent against her skin seemed like a bad idea.

"And then you kept it?

Do you know what this is?" Tansu's tone was more accusatory than curious, which indicated that she knew what it was—or at least she had a hunch.

He was right, she shouldn't have been going through his stuff. But she felt like that was besides the point for two reasons.
One — it had called to her.
Two — she grew up with four siblings. Going through someone else's stuff was par for the course.

"This stuff you have? Why would you keep something like this?!"

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Dax
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​

 

[Dax]

"How do you find something like this?"

"Same way you just did."

Green eyes shifted between making eye contact with Tansu and the sinister item in her hands. Something nudged at his idle volition. Grab it. His body language changed, becoming obvious he was anticipating something to happen. Like he'd lunge forward any moment like a cornered animal. Take it from her.

I won't.

"Do you know what this is?"

"I know what it is," he stressed defensively. He didn't really, at least not as well as Tansu did. "Why do you think I have it locked away?"

Without him realizing it. those notions whispering in his ear started to get the better of him. He took a small step forward, shrinking the distance between him and the wall behind Tansu. Another, and it would get claustrophobic.

"Why would you keep something like this?!"

"What else was I supposed to do with it? It-" Dax caught himself before he confessed that the object in question knew his name. A lump was forced breathlessly down his throat.

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

Her eyes narrowed at him. He'd found a dark artifact and kept it locked up because it called to him? That was bad news. Talin was going to have an absolute field day.

The red crystal she'd seen inside meant that it was not a Jedi lightsaber. Most Jedi constructed their weapons from natural crystals, finding and aligning them was one of the primary Jedi trials. She'd listened to Auteme many times talk about the rites and rituals of the Jedi. Enough to remember that Sith often chose synthetic crystals to match the harmonics in the searing heat of a crucible and thus take their creation of a weapon to a deeper level. The process more often than not revealed something blood-coloured by the end of it. Something as evil as its creator.

In her grip, the hilt felt like it was spurning her. It wasn't physically changed, but there was something metaphysically shifting.

"Don't come closer like that." Dax stepped forward, and Tansu did the opposite, her back up against the wall. Now they both felt trapped for one reason or another.

"Most people would destroy it." She challenged.

"Why haven't you?"

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Dax
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​

 

[Dax]

"Don't come closer like that."

That damn thing was like a magnet.

Shaking the influence of his evil friend, Dax opened his hands and faced them palm out in a disarming fashion. A step backward followed, placing him further away than he was before.

"Most people would destroy it."

"No!" he protested, fearing she'd take the opportunity to do something drastic. It nearly sent him reoccupying the space he'd just conceded back to her.

"Why haven't you?"

"I thought- Uh-" he stammered trying to formulate a careful way to word his reply.

"Okay, this is gonna sound crazy... But it can't be crazy because you heard it too." A grimace conjured across his face. Hesitation festered as he tried to assure himself this wouldn't sound completely unhinged. "It showed me something. I don't really understand how, I just thought- I dunno."

Very articulate.

"I hoped I'd find answers if I hung onto it long enough."

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

Tansu stared at him, eyes narrow and calculative. She couldn't read his innermost thoughts, nor could she read The Force well enough to discern truth from lie but there was a sincerity to him that seemed to glow. She had to trust her gut, and her perception of the warmth Dax seemed to ooze.

Between them, the silence stretched longer than Tansu thought she could bear. It felt charged as he tried to find his words. He found them, and Tansu believed them.

"Showed you..?" Tendrils of evil fluctuated in The Force and made Tansu deeply uncomfortable. Almost queasy. "Showed you..what?"

Dax looked like a bleeding heart, and he'd done so much for them. Maybe she could help him.

Maybe, if this thing didn't feel so evil she could try some psychometery on it..but that idea felt scary.

"Do you..want to find answers from a thing as dark as this?"She said suddenly, and lifted the hilt between them, although she kept a firm grasp. There was no way she'd hand over the hilt in her hands. How could she be sure he wouldn't kill her for finding it, and then the others before they found it? After all, as troubled as he was, Dax was a stranger with an artefact of the dark side locked away on his ship.

"I've never felt anything like it." Tansu admitted. "When you saw something, did you feel connected to it?"

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Dax
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​

 

[Dax]

"Showed you..what?"

"A woman."

A memory flickered behind his asseveration. For a split second, he could see her again. Hooded and clad head to toe in black. Her eyes were the most vivid part of the image, burning with an unnatural amalgam of red and yellow. There was striking umbrage in her gaze, just as noticeable in the flash of recollection as it had been in the vision. As quick as it came, the memory left, fizzling away with the undulating sound of the saber that had ushered the images into his mind.

Dax visibly shook off the urge to evoke the images once more. Those eyes had been present enough in his dreams. Between the woman's gaze and his grievances with ceiling panels, he had too many somnial discomforts to bring into the waking world.

Another deflection came when Tansu raised the hilt with an accompanying question. "Would you mind not pointing it at me?" What could have easily appeared a genuine concern was an obvious mask for his lack of words. Dax would have been surprised if he managed to actually fool her with his request. Among all his worries, Tansu accidentally igniting the weapon and taking his head off, was completely absent.

"When you saw something, did you feel connected to it?"

Dax shook his head, denying the notion. "Not connected," he clarified. "But I was there somehow."

His hand crept up to the back of his neck, uneasiness becoming visible.

"I didn't see myself, and I wasn't looking through my own eyes—"

A worried look turned up from the lightsaber to meet Tansu's interrogating regard. This must have sounded at least a little insane. A new slew of worries wormed its way in amongst the others; she wouldn't buy it, or maybe she'd turn on him once he admitted some vague connection.

"I don't know, I was just there... somewhere. I could feel it."

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

"A woman?" Tansu repeated. She didn't sound disbelieving or challenging. Just surprised.

He shook, and the distress he was under suddenly became clear. She wasn't sure how she'd missed it up until now. Maybe it was the poor lighting, or the wretchedness that was in her hands, or the lateness of the night, or an amalgamation of all the circumstances. Tansu frowned.

He backed away when she gestured at him, and she felt pitted.

"Oh, sorry."

Not his own eyes. A mysterious figure. Unfulfilled glimpses. Everything Dax said sounded like a Force Vision — the item had beckoned him, encouraging his voyeurism to moments he hadn't been a part of. Or like the result of psychometery.

"I know some psychometery." Tansu said suddenly. "It's a Force technique that lots of people have to learn, but it can be inherited. Like with Lin and I. We're part Kiffar, you see, so it's sorta just in our blood. When we touch objects, they tell us their stories. The perspectives are all warped and funky, like we're lookin' through the eyes of the object itself. It doesn't always make sense, either.

It kinda sounds like that's what happened to you."

Tansu softened and looked at the lightsaber in her hands. Her indignation started to slip away.

"If you want, I could...try and read it? Would that help you think?"

As soon as she said it out loud, the idea frightened her.

"If not, I..I dunno Dax. This is a pretty sinister thing to keep around. Do you know anything about using The Force? Or a Lightsaber?"

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Dax
____________________________________________________________
​

 

[Dax]

"You—?"

Psychometry, the Force, Kiffar, the eyes of an object. Dax's brow furrowed, it might as well have been a foreign language. His head began to move in small, gentle oscillations. Reassurance that he was sane might have brought a relieved smile, but Tansu's blasé revelation of supernatural phenomena kept everything but a confounded expression away. Half-agape, his jaw waited for words.

A quiet "What?" was all he could muster.

When she offered to read the saber, he snapped out of it. Based on her short explanation of psychometry, Dax found it a mutually frightening prospect. Part of him didn't want to know, but his presence in the visions dictated some protest contrary to his reservations. Something deep in him had to know, no matter how much the rest of him disrelished it.

"The Force? Or a Lightsaber?"

"No, I always thought it was—" Strangling his sentiment, a pause materialized while his eyes fell upon a raised hand. Every burn across his turning manus was surveyed with renewed perspective. "Superstition."

Damn.

His eyes had hardened by the time they reconvened with Tanus's. No more concern or belligerence burned behind the viridescence. "That's why you heard it too? The Force?" Barefoot and sparsely dressed in the deepest recess of the cargo hold felt a bad place for an epiphany. It made so much more sense than he was comfortable with. All this time, the fire, the weapon, it came back to something so unbelievable and otherworldly as the Force.

All that fighting on Jedha wasn't a dumb religious squabble after all.

Soft laughter tittered from Dax's lips. A hand covered his eyes, obscuring all but the disbelieving smile that heralded every wry pulse. "No way," he whispered flippantly, roiled by circumstance. All those prayers to the unknown conductor of the universe for things to get easier? Nothing but mental screams into an uncaring void. The Force clearly wasn't listening, either.

Why me? That was the unceasing query of Dax's last decade of existence. Even recently, the weapon, the Twins, Jedha, it all comes back to that simple question. And now even the Force landed beneath that umbrella. If it was really all connected, the saber must have an answer. Though, the idea of looking through its eyes again wasn't the most appealing option.

Then again, Tansu seemed at least somewhat confident, if not slightly hesitant.

"You would read it for me?"

Pour over me.

Dax shuddered. "You aren't... afraid?"

Tansu Treicolt​

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

"Superstition?" If bewilderment wasn't so clearly spanned across Dax's face, Tansu would have been suffocating a chuckle. As it stood, she just blinked incredulously. "With the likes of The Galactic Alliance and the New Jedi Order and The Sith'ari of The Brotherhood of The Maw? And of —" she stopped before it got pedantic and resigned to making a twisted face. However he maintained his ignorance in a galaxy brimming with Force uers was far beyond her comprehension, and she was unlikely to fully understand tonight. "Okayyy, Dax. Nothing gets by you."

He seemed to be drawing this conclusion and all its related connections for the first time ever. She softened and promised herself not to tease his next revelation. Whatever it was.

"Yes. A whisper through the Force."

Tansu stood there, spectator to Dax's slow-coming realization of a thousand threads interconnected at a single point. Silently she watched his face twitch, eyes dart, mouth pull, and mentally go somewhere that was not the cargo bay. When he came back, she was ready for his question.

"I would." She said firmly and nodded. Surety rose within her and lodged in her throat. Her grip on the saber tightened, as if to bolster her confidence and sense of ownership over the task in her hand. She would have left it at that, feigned readiness and dove right into the mechanics of psychometery, but Dax's care intervened.

Before answering, she looked down at her feet. The hilt felt wretched, evil, and cold. Like if she held it too long she'd come down with a fever. The idea of surrending her psyche — albeit temporarily — to something so tarnished by the darkside was very scary indeed.

"I am afraid." Tansu admitted, and swallowed a gulp of fear. "But I reckon you've done so much for us, y'know getting us off Castell, helping us save Kyric... and this is something I can do to try and return the favour and help you out. So, I'd like to." She looked back up at him. "I want to help you try to understand what this is, and why it called to you.

It called to me, and here we are. You need it read, I can read it. Coincidences and The Force don't coexist.

So let's do it. Ready?"

____________________________________________________________
Dax
____________________________________________________________
​

 

[Dax]

"Okayyy, Dax. Nothing gets by you."

"Hey!" Dax protested softly. "None of this stuff is relevant where I'm from." Unbeknownst to him, his ignorance was part of a grand design set in place before he was born. The last thing his mother wanted was for him to get involved in the eternal duality of the force. So much for that. "I never saw a Jedi or Sith on Nar Shaddaa."

"A whisper," he repeated softly. It felt more like a scream. A constant wailing of withdrawal from whatever cravings the blade yearned for. He could hear it now, suppressed in his psyche. It could whisper names, wants, and temptations, but as far as Dax's ears were concerned, the wailing was ceaseless. It always wanted more, always needed more. Sometimes at night, he could hear it call him out on his fears, baiting him to come into the cargo bay. Dax envied Tansu, that she didn't experience the full extent of its sonic wrath.

A hopeful glimmer sparked to life when Tansu confirmed his query. It quickly progressed into horror. What would they see? What if they were better off not knowing the truth? How could he not be paranoid about the evil artifact in this cargo hold that she'd just moments earlier insisted he destroy? How could he not be afraid? But when he pressed, she shared his apprehension. Maybe that caution was a good thing, or maybe their mutual reservations meant they were unknowingly machinating their dooms.

A tight, uncertain smile was conjured by Tansu's confession of gratitude. This whole time, maybe, he'd only been going along with all of this as a break from the monotony of solitude. He never thought he'd receive a genuine display of thanks, feeling like they had been paying him back just by being here.

And now she wanted to help him?

"So let's do it. Ready?"

Yield to me.

Dax gulped. "Not really." Looking down, his mind racing with possibilities in multitudes. He was beginning to sweat. Slowly, his hand raised toward the hilt, trembling. "Do I just—?" His fingers wrapped around it, grasping opposite of Tansu's clutches.

Suddenly, he recognized how heavy his breathing was.

Yield to me.

He still wasn't ready.

Now or never, isn't it?

He looked up at Tansu. She looked more determined than he expected.

Damn.

A deep breath. He still wasn't ready. "Okay... let's do this." But when had that ever stopped him?

Tansu Treicolt​

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

"I don't know how to show you exactly what I'm seeing, I'll try, but just in case it doesn't work, I'll say out loud what I'm seeing. Peachy?" It seemed like a good idea to manage expectations before they begun. Especially since Dax was so apprehensive.

She was apprehensive too, and decided it would be good to put up some boundaries on how far she was willing to go: "If somethin' goes wrong, we go to deep, I'm gonna drop this thing like a hot potato."

A second passed and she still hadn't started. Her mouth was thin and pursed. "Actually, that goes for you too. If somethin's too much, pull your hand off and yell or somethin'.

Sometimes it gets loopy fast, and it's hard to know what's real and what ain't. Maybe even drop to the ground. Something to…remind you that you're in the cargo bay in your pyjamas. Not..wherever we're about to go see. Okay? Okay."

If someone told the Tansu from two weeks ago that she'd be standing in the cargo bay of a freighter, in her pyjamas, holding onto a Sith artefact and promising to read it for someone to understand their Force visions, she would have laughed herself right off Concord Dawn.

"I'm gonna need you to relax as best you can. Make yourself feel as you as possible. As big as you can be. I know that doesn't make sense, but, just imagine your gravity ballooning outward."

Through thinly parted lips, she inhaled, let the breath settle in her core, and exhaled. Her fingers drummed on the hilt, feeling it with one hand while another slid over Dax's. She wasn't sure if the contact was necessary or not, but she figured some sort of physical indicator would assist with the network effect of sharing the weapon's memories.

A countdown would have been nice. If Tansu were more of an elegant Force user, she might have had the grace to know exactly when her psychometry would queue up the visions. Sometimes, it happened quickly. Other times, it took a few minutes. But it always started with a gentle fade.

She opened herself up to the Force, waiting for its gentle guidance, and was instead met with a hungry torrent that twisted reality and hurled her into a vortex of shadow and whispering winds. It felt as though she were being yanked forcibly through a tunnel alive with malevolent spirits, each shriek and moan a testament to the weapon's gruesome legacy.

It happened so fast that she couldn't uphold her first intention — there was no way she could voice out to Dax what was happening. The wind whooshed out of her, leaving her with not even enough breath to make her vocal chord buzz. Just move her lips noiselessly in a vain attempt to express the instantaneousness of the pull. Tansu gasped, feeling the chill seep in from the overwhelming despair.

"Ee—e-everything is w-w-hite," she managed through chattering teeth. Why was she so cold? Her temperature had dropped all the way to her bones. "We're in an i-ice cave. F-full of c-c-crystals. Probabl-b-ly Ilum. Th-there's a hand, reaching toward a crystal. This crystal." The palm eclipsed her vision and she felt the sensation of being plucked from a secure spot and the transition to a new, unknown place.

Where she'd felt cold now felt superheated. Her hand on top of Dax's was probably sweating just after it had been trembling. But she wasn't conscious of that. Darkness' pull eclipsed her entirely, plunged into her veins, and kept her concentration fully on the web it weaved. "I, ah, it's so —"

In the cargo bay, Tansu was shaking. The retelling of the saber's lore was so violent that she'd been reduced to a mere vessel. A husk for a history to fill. Its hold was sinister and intense, and it took everything she had not to collapse fully into the narrative and lose reality. Water burgeoned at the edge lines of her eyes and she trembled, but pressed on.

"It's changing. The crystal is changing. A woman is overseeing it, working to affect the crystal. She's got red hair." She explained as the vision changed, the colour of the icy walls shifted from the serene, calm blue to a violent, hateful red. "It's corrupted." The transformation was palpable and painful to witness. She felt her mouth go dry as the residual anger, rage, fear, bled through her palm all the way up her neck. The emotions were so strong that they permeated even now, bellowed out and ricocheted from wall to wall in the cargo bay.

Tansu was missing parts of the story, but she couldn't help it. The narration she'd thought herself capable of was impossible against the tides of overwhelming power and allure the sober manifested. All she could hope was that the translation of the vision was happening through her presence all the way to Dax's.

Before she'd begun, she'd felt him. A blobby shape in the Force, full of uncertainty, undefined and raw. She'd tried to brush against it, establish some sort of connection so he could be part of this.

"It's clashing with another now," she whispered, feeling the heat and the reverberations of the fight, "Resting, looks to be a bedside. There's someone there— I can't make it out." Her brows knit. The silhouette of the person was near enough to wherever the hilt rested that their details should have been plainly obvious, but there was so much pent up emotion around them that she couldn't make out anything more than a masculine shape.

"Fighting again." She announced, and watched that silhouette move from intimately near to standoffish and offensive. "But this means everything. There's so much emotion I can't make anything other than —" she was about to speak to the vitriolic malevolence she felt, but it overwhelmed her. The darkness was too much, too impactful, and Tansu felt her voice drain again. It was cold, awful, and evil. Whatever this standoff was, it was one of deep hate and passion, and it was all-consuming.

She wrenched her hand away with such force that she staggered back, let go of the sober and collapsed. Heaving, sweating, and staring at the floor, Tansu gathered her legs back underneath her and drew her arms into herself without saying anything further.

The room around her felt oppressively silent after the howling winds of Ilum, the visions of shapes she didn't understand, and the final collision fuelled only by loathing.

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Dax
____________________________________________________________
​

 

[Dax]

Dax nodded slowly as Tansu explained psychometry and doled out warnings. It was confusing and even more so unbelievable. "This is insane," he muttered.

"I'm gonna need you to relax as best you can. Make yourself feel as you as possible. As big as you can be. I know that doesn't make sense, but, just imagine your gravity ballooning outward."

"I don't get it," he confessed. "But I'll do my best."

Dax closed his eyes as Tansu's hand slipped over his. Remembering what she'd said, he tried to make himself big. Over and over, he told himself mentally, wordlessly, that he was a colossus. However, a nagging sense that he wasn't doing it right mocked him somewhere beneath it all. Ignoring it, his focus deepened, waiting to feel or see something. Anything.

He felt cold.

"Ee—e-everything is w-w-hite."

Winds rushed in his ears, and hairs stood up on his arms from the sudden plummet in temperature. It startled him, almost peeking to ensure he was still in his ship. Shivering became a mutual affliction as his teeth too began to chatter. Despite this, he couldn't see anything besides the back of his eyelids.

"We're in an i-ice cave. F-full of c-c-crystals. Probabl-b-ly Ilum."

A lazuline glimmer lit up in the void of his perception. "I—" He stuttered "I see it."

Just as soon as it appeared, the glittering fizzled to nothing. With sudden longing, Dax attempted to delve deeper. He searched the nothingness for that glimmer, even as the winds silenced and the cold became an unbearable heat. Tanu's next descriptors somehow barely audible. A pulling sensation overtook Dax, his being caught in a vortex. Fighting it was a losing effort, the blade was pulling him in.

"Tansu!?" he cried out, afraid. She didn't hear him

Yield to me.

Stop!

Yield everything to me.

Stop it!

"It's corrupted."

Tansu's voice became audible again for a split second. It was the last thing he heard before plummeting into a stygian abyss of whispers. Dozens of voices he felt he should have recognized assaulted him from every possible cognitive direction.

I wish I knew.

Hard to control someone a step ahead of you.

Jedi are supposed to be tools of the Force itself.

Forty minutes.

Talk to me.

Why do you resist?

I could end your stupid tantrum as quickly as I might blow out a candle.

I'm fine.

Just because you can handle it doesn't mean you have to.

You look like you have something to say.

You're that Sith schutta- the one who turned him, aren't you?

I would do anything for him.

You. Dogged as ever.

And yet, no words of affection for me?

You didn't come here for affection.

I'll kill you both.

With a great effort, he tore himself back to Tansu's prescience. For a moment, he could finally see. Conflict bathed heavily in a cascade of magmatic emotions. A woman with red hair, and a man man of blur, surrounded by hate and grief and... love? It all went critical at one moment, overwhelming Dax in an instant with a brief, clear vision of the man's face.

Dax screamed as he fell backward onto his posterior. "Fuck!"

Heavy breathing occupied the cargo bay's silence. All he could do was stare at the floor an hyperventilate for an unspecific number of moments. Finally, looking up, he saw Tansu curled in on herself. It took a second to processes the amount of distress she must have been in. He could almost feel it. Immediately, he was wracked with guilt. That must have been so much worse for her, he could hardly imagine.

Body trembling, he crawled over to her. "Are you okay?" he asked tentatively, placing an unstill hand on her arm.

 

[Tansu Treicolt]

​

Throughout their shared experience, Tansu hadn't heard a peep from Dax other than him validate he could see something. That had sent a trill of excitement coruscating through her! But after that, nothing. Not even when he shouted her name. There had been too many conflicting voices. Darkness' pull had been all-consuming and overwhelmed every single one of her senses to the point of disassociation.

On the periphery of her awareness, she heard Dax's ragged, quickened breaths. It was as offbeat and irregular as the pounding of her pulse in her ears. It was a sound that brought her heart to her mouth. But she couldn't find it in herself to move. Her body felt coated in ash; as though a film of charred remains covered her skin, clung to her clothes and matted in her hair.

When he asked her if she was okay, Tansu wanted to lie. Never before had she encountered the Darkside. On Jedha, she'd felt something wrong, but only in a way that made her vaguely uneasy. This churned her core and turned her inside out. She stayed so silent he could have judged her insensible.

Everything about the room felt changed and it swelled around her like a bruise. It was as if she could see the spaces between molecules in the air, like the atoms themselves had become a thin fog and from that fog, that deep, entrancing, thin mist, erupted an evil undone. It had a pulse of her own, and refused to quiet.

"I might throw up." She whispered finally. It was an indirect answer, but teetered more into the arena of not-okay versus okay.

Her eyes squeezed shut and her arms pressed tighter to herself. Just to feel steady. When she opened her eyes again, she looked at his hand on her arm. He was shaking. His trembling palm quivered on her skin and she felt less ashy. Her stomach's roil slowed and pitted. Then she took in his face. He looked shaken, pallid, distressed, concerned, all serious and attentive. So many emotions conveyed from green eyes and a thinly drawn mouth.

"D-did that help any?" her voice was mouselike. "You said you could see — did you see answers?"

If it were possible, she became even quieter.

"Is it still speaking to you?" Could it possibly have more to say?

____________________________________________________________
Dax
____________________________________________________________
​

 

[Dax]

"You said you could see — did you see answers?"

Dax frowned, removed his hand from Tanu's arm and scrambled backward slowly to sit against the wall at her ninetieth-degree. His forearms rested atop his knees as a pedestal for his chin. "I think I have even more questions now," he replied, defeat triumphing in his tone.

"Is it still speaking to you?"

Looking down at the chromy helve, for the first time in longer than he could remember, Dax heard nothing but silence. Systems and components buzzed and droned monotonously around the cargo hold, but it was good enough for this newfound sense of sonic tranquillity. "No."

So he sat, listening to the silent songs the ships sang in its deepest recesses. Meanwhile, those eyes reigned in his memory. A horrible thought gave birth to the desperate hope they weren't meant to be his own.