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Private The Pain Heals

Vesta

Guest
V


Zambrano Estate, Maena

Things had been quiet since the moment she had, by all rights, died on Rhand.

Quiet in the streets, quiet in the void of space as she flew back across the smear of stars to Maena, and silent in her head - there had always been a whisper there, before, some connection to a past that she thought she'd be satisfied by severing herself from, but now there was nothing. Worse, still, was the icy chill that simply refused to leave her spine, or the anxious feeling of tightness in her chest, and the time that followed her seemingly first and last confrontation with Quinn Varanin Quinn Varanin left her further from the freedom she'd been promised than she had been in the first place. Servants that rushed towards her, mortified at the state she was in when she returned, were entirely ignored by the visibly numb Vesta - she had everything she'd decided that she had wanted, and somehow it still felt like she was missing something. A wet rag pressed up against the side of her face, its snow-white fabric turning red as whatever medicinal substance it was doused in ate away at the dirty scabbing that had started to form over one of her wounds, but she didn't seem the least bit fazed, much less as concerned as the servants fearing the wrath of the heiress' father if he were to discover the state she was in.

Though he already knew, she'd already spilled her heart out to him in such a manner he'd thought that she'd torn it out with her hands and a knife.

He wasn't pleased with the decision she'd made, the pointless, and in the views of most anyone, senseless mutilation she'd caused for herself, but she'd made it clear that she was her own master at this point - much more-so than she had in the past. Stepping into the meditation chambers that she'd set aside for her apprentice to use when she'd brought her to the estate some time ago for the first time, expecting solitude - the servants barred from following her inside - she instead found Darth Daiara Darth Daiara inside, apparently returning sooner than she'd expected. Not that the girl had offered her a window of time for her return longer than this, she had been intending to return before Vesta had left for Rhand, but she hadn't exactly been one for punctuality.

"I don't understand how you do it." She said breathlessly, exhaustion clear by the lack of drive in the tone of her voice.

She was down on her hands and knees rather quickly, once the doors closed behind her, and let her composure fall apart - her face was nearly gaunt, her skin a sickly pallor, with sweat rolling down her forehead. This was, certainly, the lowest she'd ever felt and it certainly looked it. She'd exerted herself heavily, consuming so much for the first time and in such a wide-sweeping pull, but she wasn't speaking about the state of her stamina, that was something she'd plenty of experience dealing with - emotional stress, however, was something she was still grappling with.

By the looks of it, it'd gotten the better of her.

"It's so much easier to just shut.. everything out.." She managed as she let her body rest in her kneeling position.
 
"Chit," Aradia breathed, scattering across the floor on her hands and knees as she strived to reach her wayward Master. Her meditation exercise was forgone, she wasn't getting very far in it anyway.

Her thoughts had been anywhere but where it mattered. What darkness she had managed to pull into herself quickly bled from her system, her blue eyes catching Vesta's as she braced the woman in her arms.

"Chit," she repeated, getting a better look of the shell of a body crumbled before her. What the hell had Vesta gotten into? Aradia gritted her teeth and hoisted the woman up, dragging her inch by inch into the ring in the center. The force fueled her small limbs.

"You say--easy-- keeps you-- weak--" She gritted, lowering Vesta in. She paused and eyed the woman. "Or is that just how you get your fun in."

Many a lessons had been above Aradia's pay grade and Aradia had persevered. Through sweat and spit and pain Aradia had progressed. She got the sense of what Vesta was referring to. There was irony in Vesta's words. Out of respect, she kept that irony to herself.

"Leg in." She directed, moving to quickly draw runes of power to help the woman. She looked from her task, dark hair sticking to her forehead. "Do I need to need to worry about guests?" Direct and to the point. Concerned burned behind the ferocity in her eyes. If there was a threat, she would deal with it.

Darth Mori
 
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Vesta

Guest
V

She thought to herself, 'I must look like a fool.'

She felt it, and certainly knew she was one.

She had made herself strong, powerful - independent - but here she was falling apart at the seams, nearly literally. It took one scathing view on her character from a single individual to undo all of the progress she'd made since she'd conquered her desire to remove herself from existence, only now she knew that even if she wished it that could never happen for her now. Not that knowing this, or this even being reality, made her existence and suffering any more tolerable now that she felt like she was struggling to keep the contents of her stomach inside of her - a struggle that wasn't real as she had been starving herself for days, which she would have attributed to her ruined stamina if not for the fact that she hadn't actually slept in weeks.

The concern that reached her ears was almost musical - and it was also what made her feel rather fortunate that her apprentice no longer made ploys to kill her; not that it would've been very productive for either of them if she had suddenly changed her mind on that front. "Weakness is.. vulnerability.." She managed, between the short gasps for breath that were concerningly shallow and frustratingly spaced. She tugged her leg in towards her, wincing as she felt the urge to shift into something that was more suitably comfortable - something she now consciously refused to do.

She'd made this face, this body, and dressed it in the flaws it had to make herself feel normal.

To feel.

The pain it felt was real, to change it was only to pretend it didn't exist. Shame crossed her eyes at Aradia's question, a tinge of color reaching her cheeks as she felt the embarrassment wash over her, and she shakily shook her head from side to side with tears starting to trickle out of the corners of her eyes.


"You were right."

'I don't understand.'


Darth Daiara Darth Daiara
 
"No. Weakness just is. Pretending they don't exist is a vulnerability." They. Emotions. Neither of them had it under control, did they? Aradia gave hers too much power, Vesta never learned how to deal. As long as they existed on their opposite spectrums, they would always be vulnerable to it's touch.

Kaalia knew that, but even now Aradia couldn't accept this cold truth. She was like Vesta in that, and here they were both reaping what they sowed. ...Vesta a little more than her, in this moment.

"You were right."

She grimaced, no pleasure found in this victory. "You went and found her, didn't you?" She threw the chalk away crawled in, yanking a crystal off the alter and placing it between them.

With everything in place, Aradia let out a heavy sigh and braced herself. She couldn't sustain the woman like had once been done for her, but she could help restore Vesta to full strength.

A pinch in her gut made her wonder if Vesta even wanted that. Something felt off, and it wasn't the tears falling from her Master's eyes.

"...You can't make it go away. It will get the better of you if you try." Aradia was never good at this sort of stuff. Talking. Helping. She had tried with her peers and she had failed them all. The war wasn't her fault. Their orders and the deaths weren't on her hands. Still. Vesta was her master, she had powers that Aradia could only strive for. But there was one thing she had learned from living through that all, and if Vesta could benefit from it?

They would both become stronger.

"You have to... accept it. It hurts and its not easy, but then you can use it. Hatred isn't all that fuels us, you know. Love... desire, heart break..."

"Peace is a lie... There is only passion." She quoted gingerly, pulling from their code. She took Vesta's hands and closed her eyes. She half expected the woman to rebuke her as she always did, but she pressed on regardless.

Where Vesta was raw power, Aradia was years of meticulous training. Vesta had tried to break down some of the rigid constructions that guided Aradia, but they stood even now ... shaky but present.

Aradia let herself fall head first into the darkness, her determination to protect those she loved acting as a funnel that kept it all in check. It was a slow and diminished process, she itched to break it and let herself indulge in full, but she didn't.

In that moment, Vesta was her focus. Her essence slipped from her fingers and crawled up Vesta's veins. Whether or not she wanted it, Aradia tried to restore her.
 
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Vesta

Guest
V

Like a continuing chain of falling pillars, the words her apprentice spoke only added to the strange sense of mental vertigo she had been in ever since she discovered how different her perspective had been to Quinn's. She was supposed to be right, she was supposed to be the teacher, the wiser of the two in matters pertaining to their abilities - she had even lectured the girl on this very subject, though their roles had been reversed then. It was like everything was upside down and she couldn't turn herself around to see things clearly, and her mind was in the same haze it had been since she pulled herself back together again from the dust she had been reduced to after she'd decided to cope with the devastation of Rhand rather than risk showing a teary face to anyone in the Maw.

Resignation to the inevitability of Darth Daiara Darth Daiara discovering her master in such a state was the only reason she'd so openly approached her in such a manner. She could have licked her wounds on her own, they were self-inflicted after all, but she needed something she had been trying to avoid for quite some time; a friend. If it hadn't hurt to laugh she would've done so as the crushing weight of the irony of all her choices had set upon her, but it did so she didn't. She just appreciated that her apprentice didn't try to kill her then and there.

She grunted in reaction to the girl's lecturing, uninterested in a teaching moment - she was quite aware of her emotions, it was only everyone else that she kept in the dark. Her stiff, beaten, body went slack, though, when she realized what exactly it was that Aradia intended to do - which was precisely the moment she felt strength course through her veins. She turned her face towards the cold surface of the floor and shut her eyes as her rust-colored hair fell to her face, matted with her own blood and the ash she had been covered in on Rhand when the dust had settled.

She let the girl try for a moment longer before she pushed her away with strength she shouldn't have had - strength that seemed to be shoring up in her at a state that wouldn't have been noticeable without drawing comparisons to her appearance when she'd walked in to how she looked now.

The woman was still a mess, her features still strikingly morbid, but there was evidence of change - of wounds that were slowly, very slowly, closing in a way that was altogether different from the sorts of regeneration some species exhibited but with a result that was very much the same. It was as if time itself was unwinding in her, around her, or like she was being pulled back together by strength of will - or spite.

Or maybe despair.

"Stop it." She whispered, her face still hidden. "Don't feed me."

She turned her face towards her apprentice, its expression pained for so many reasons.


"Rhand already did."
 
Aradia gasped as she was moved, the sudden motion shattering her concentration and jolting her back with a wave of adrenaline. Yeah. Saw that coming.

She blinked rapidly, veins of black receding from her neck. Even with her form of meditation it took a solid moment to fight against the bite of agitation the corruption gave her. She would never be untouchable from it, just... unflappable. ...Could she do that?

She sighed heavily and let herself fall onto her back. A few more breaths helped worked her down, until her eyes cleared and she was left frowning at the ceiling.

She didn't get this master of hers. Every time she thought she did, she just felt stupid afterwards. She grunted in response and tilted her head to look Vesta over. Her brows pulled in and covered her inner thoughts.

"Could you do it?"
 
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Vesta

Guest
V


"..No." She admitted after a long pause, providing Darth Daiara Darth Daiara with a sigh that implied there was a story behind the upset tone. Or, with the look in her eyes as she rolled onto her side and stared out towards her apprentice, at the very least a reason. There was one, of course - both a story and a reason, though the two were very much related and more or less the same. She'd had the chance to shield herself and continue a 'normal' life with Quinn turned into char, if the very personal act of murder was too much for her to handle with her ex as the target, but instead she'd opted for the very bizarre decision of taking the planetary bombardment into herself and shielding the echani instead.

Granted it had been to force the girl to watch the thing she purported to care about be glassed with the hellscape around her, even if that thing was Vesta herself.

It went further than that, though; there had been a promise she'd made to Quinn that might've been taken less at face value than it should have, and it was that she'd make certain that she killed every last thing she could manage and leave the princess to watch. It was the cop out of excuses, maybe - provide her a chance to change her mind, to theoretically die before seeing such a fantastical plan out - but it had been the reason she had given for why she didn't gut the echani where she stood when she had the chance.

That and, well, maybe she thought it was a disproportionate response to kill Quinn just because she'd told her plainly to her face that she loved her and only every thought of her when she was with whichever person it was she kept with her these days. Maybe she'd made her want to kill herself, and in a way she had, but she didn't quite see the point in doing much more than making it clear what she thought of her ex. "There wasn't a fight." She revealed, strength returning to her lungs now. "I did this to myself."


"Made her watch."
 
Aradia crinkled her nose.

"Ouch," she commented. Ouch was likely an understatement, but it was better than the 'why' that came to mind first. She could almost understand it, what with her own strained relationship with her mother. It was one thing punish someone for hurting you, it was another to do it by destroying yourself.

Aradia could never do the same, but even so the image of her destroying herself before a set a jedi for revenge struck a cord inside of her. She stifled a laugh. Wrong type of revenge. She wasn't in love with the jedi. Well, just one jedi... Her expression sobered at the reminder of Zaavik's current state.

...Timing would be everything when bringing that up.

She turned on her side to face her, watching the way her body slowly reknit. Her gaze trailed up.

"What did she do?"
 

Vesta

Guest
V

you & jennifer

It had started to make sense the longer she thought about it, especially when she had taken into consideration what Darth Daiara Darth Daiara had told her about her emotional maturity, and here, now, it was the only thing that she could tell herself to make it hurt just a little bit less. It had been easier when she hadn't spoken to Quinn just yet, when there were still so many things that could've made things make sense, but the worst case scenario had a way of finding her through all the bullshit, through all the possibilities, and the answer to Aradia's question, this time, was precisely that.

"Said she'd only been thinking about me." She said quietly, her voice much smaller than she'd ever let it get before.

The context there was a bit open, without further elaboration, and for a moment or two she grappled with the strength of will it took to explain what she meant by that - words getting stuck in her throat for long enough that it seemed like she might've paused, or maybe just decided not to say anymore. "..When she was with them." Vesta managed, her voice cracking. She closed her eyes and rolled onto her back, her chest heaving as she regulated her breathing and forced herself not to cry. 'That was supposed to make things okay?' She thought, just as she'd screamed then - not that Quinn could have heard her from the comfort of a shuttle when she laid down and wept.

Deep breath in, then slow exhale out.

"Let's not make this about me." She said, voice still shaken but with some degree more resolve. "I'll be fine, what happened with you? You were gone longer than you said you'd be." Vesta continued, shifting the conversation away as best she could from something she still wasn't comfortable with confronting yet.


"Everything okay?"
 
Aradia grimaced. It was her turn to turn away, her head tilted up to the ceiling as she forced to consider her words a lot sooner than she had expected.

Yanno she liked focusing on Vesta's problems better. Was everything ok with her? "No," she sighed, taking several more momentum to struggle for her words.

"I um. I drained my boyfriend."

A beat, then she added quickly, "Oh he's fine now. ...Mostly. ....Alliance is closing in pretty tight on us lately." Her lips moved, catching on the next sentence that wouldn't come.

She fought with it for a moment, then turned back on her side and studied her Master.

"Do you think... there'd ever be another? For you. I mean it can't be so black and white anymore. Quinn was a jerk, but you could find another. Someone you... could put trust in. " She was getting somewhere with this. One might sense it had little to do with Vesta and all to do with setting the scene.
 
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Vesta

Guest
V


There was something deeply cathartic about this, she realized. It was almost therapeutic to just unload like this, to discuss the issues she was having or had been having. Normally she'd be absolutely opposed to this kind of openness, which she had been attributing to her issues with her last relationship, and especially so with her apprentice, but now she wasn't quite so sure. There were still things that she wasn't comfortable talking about for very long, or sometimes at all, but it made things better. Trying to confront her ex and explain how things had gone for her, even if she had been rather confrontational and angry about it, had only made things worse.

It wasn't that it was Darth Daiara Darth Daiara listening and answering back that made the difference, either - Vesta might not have had the experience to understand the overcomplicated ramifications of what she'd been told on Rhand, but she wasn't an idiot either.

Her apprentice was giving her normal human interaction, which was quite different than the sort of thing she'd remembered having with her former apprentice. "You did what?" She asked, catching what Aradia had said while she was admittedly thinking about something else entirely. Her eyes were open again and any sign of fatigue had passed, aside from the fact that she was still mostly lying down, so she was fully capable of shooting her apprentice a look of concern when she quickly explained that he was 'better'. The tidbit about the Alliance being on their tail was something she more or less knew by virtue of Zaavik Perl Zaavik Perl having been a designated traitor of the Jedi cause, but it hadn't ever really.. registered.. that he'd been literally on the run by people that were actively chasing him.

She supposed his old master, Locke, was probably the reason behind that, though she didn't actually know or care to have known much about that either.

Easier to assume, for her.

"Someone else?" She asked, initially taking the question at face value before giving the context behind the question some more thought. She narrowed her eyes and exhaled through her nose audibly, "Why? What do you want." She cut to the chase immediately, though she started to internally consider the question to herself just the same, when she recognized there was another question waiting depending on the answer she was going to give.
 
Aradia grimaced.

"I seem to remember a certain someone declaring that boy was a problem for me and my progress. And you see... if you still felt that way... it make begin to make things a little awkward. But now that you've had time... to realize some people are just jerks..." She spoke carefully, balancing her words inside the moment.

She had never spoken to Vesta about her personal life before, but those walls had begun to break down. It was uncomfortable, not because she didn't know to be level with someone ... but because she didn't know how the woman would respond. It was often like a grab back. She could never predict what would come next.

"I just... need to know... If you're done being a queen about it," she ended anticlimactically, a bit of dry humor to be found in her suddenly tactless use of words.

She sat up, black strands of dyed hair falling over her shoulder as she gave a helpless frown.

"I just don't want issues. With us, or you two. We're in some deep chit as it is."
 

Vesta

Guest
V


She shook her head, eyes shut again, in response to the way Darth Daiara Darth Daiara had framed her frustration with the two of them. She thought that maybe she had explained herself well enough to dispel any confusion there but it seemed she hadn't. Normally she would have interjected or grown upset, instead she moved her thoughts away from fleeting thoughts of something new and instead towards the way she thought she sounded or came across and the way other people understood her while keeping her mouth shut to hear the girl out. Incapable of tact though the girl might be, she did crack a hint of a smile at the level of hesitance she heard in Aradia's voice when she tried to walk what she likely thought was a fine line in describing her views on Quinn. A hint that was soon a broad smirk at the open disdain for Vesta's own attitude on relationships.

Humor hadn't ever been something she found entertaining, though humor at her own expense was quickly becoming a compelling reason to believe that she might've missed out on much more than she had thought.

At last Aradia gave her the answer she had been looking for, to which she nodded, and she determined it was good a time as any to explain herself.

"Maybe I did a poor job of explaining why I was so.. upset.. with you after Korriban, Aradia, but it wasn't about him so much as it was about your willingness to abandon your wits for his sake." She said, repositioning herself onto her side and propping her head up with her left hand while her right stayed at her side on the ground. "I understand, probably more than you think I do, the extent someone might be willing to go to when they think someone they care about is in danger - but if answering this is the easier way to explain things, then, Aradia, yes, I suppose I am done being a queen about things."

She nearly laughed at that, probably would have in any other circumstance, but the initial question was quite a bit more sobering than she would have liked. "Contrary to popular belief, apprentice, I am not some frigid ice queen. I have feelings, some towards other people, but I also have goals and I am not willing to compromise my success for the chance at growing sentimental with someone." There was a sigh there, after she said that, though it wasn't quite so melodramatic as it might've been if she had been stuck in such a mood, but it was paired with an expression that was a bit more thoughtful than it was dismissive - which her tone had implied she might have been.

"You called me a child, once, or maybe a dozen times - I don't really ever listen to you when you start insulting me, you know - and you probably meant that figuratively, like I haven't grown up or something.." She said after a momentary pause, trying to find words and a measure of tone that wasn't quite as depressing as this felt sometimes. "You can think of me like you might a .. a clone or something."

She seemed bothered by that comparison, like she was someone's facsimile - a replacement. A mere copy.

"They're born and have their growth accelerated until they've hit the point they're supposed to be.. which is what happened with me." Vesta explained, her brow furrowing at the strangeness in making that comparison out loud. It made sense to her, sort of, with the process that clones went through - they at least got experiences and memories flashed into their brains so they weren't clueless to all of the giant swathes of empty space they would've otherwise had from birth to adulthood. "I just.. I'm not a clone, or someone's replacement.. or anything like that. I was supposed to be someone's daughter, but they were dead before I was rightly alive."

That was a depressing thought no matter how she put it, though she said it so matter-of-factly - like she'd recited it to herself in the mirror, or maybe to someone else, hundreds of times now.

"I'm.. different.. because of that. Quinn was one of the first people I met.. and the circumstances around that are so messed up.. so it's a little hard to wrap my head around everything that had happened. But I understand that we eventually meet other people who can... be just as important." She continued, trying rather hard not to use the word replace. "In case it wasn't obvious I didn't get the whole here's someone else's memories and experiences package handed to me when I was.. born.. either. I know my father, I have heard of my mother, and I knew Quinn. That was the extent of what I understood to be family."

She rolled back onto her back, suddenly much more interested in a certain spot on the ceiling.


"You and him, Zaavik Perl Zaavik Perl , you two have what I wanted. I'm a bit jealous, to be honest, but I don't wish what I went through onto you, either."

"Just don't expect this kind of.. whatever it is I'm doing.. more often."


"Honestly I don't even know why I'm still talking, I don't usually say anywhere near this much." She added quietly, mostly to herself - though she supposed it was as much to the girl as it was to her. Rhand had been a moment of change for her, in some ways she had become much more of the monster she so filled with angst over while in others she'd become much less boarded up. Maybe she didn't feel like she needed to wall herself up as much, or maybe she just figured out how to draw better boundaries for herself, but whatever the case she was different.

For better, and for worse.
 
Relief loosened up her shoulders, a smile cracking back at Vesta. It was true, she had never heard the woman speak this much about herself. Usually it was lectures or oddly worded pep talks, but it was this moment that made her feel more in sync with her master than ever before.

"Yeah. It's a bit weird, huh. ...They always set us against each other at the academies. I guess I can see why," she admitted, the smile faltering into something reluctant as she recalled a past that had been burned to the ground.

"Make us rely on ourselves, trust no one, treat every moment as an attack and yeah, it weeded us out fast. ...I saw so many of us die before the jedi even arrived... You would have thought the ones remaining were..." strong.

Memories of Loske Treicolt Loske Treicolt and Maynard Treicolt Maynard Treicolt baring down on her came to mind, the two jedi moving in sync as they covered each other. Together. As one.

And there she had stood. Alone. The acolytes that had been forged in blood and pain died in single digits around her. It didn't need to happen like that.


Aradia grimaced and looked down to her nails, dirt coating their grown out length. "Maybe there's something to be said about ...friends? It's a lot easier to survive when there's someone at your back." Zaavik's face came to mind, her whole demeanor unconsciously softening. That was what Vesta wanted, wasn't it? A place to breathe and lower ones guard.

Aradia thought it was normal, needed even.

"They don't teach that in the Academies, do they. ...Wouldn't want to risk an insurrection," she grumbled, yanking the edge of her nail clean off. "And that's why they're all dead."
 

Vesta

Guest
V


She didn't have an answer to her apprentice's question, perhaps because she had missed out on the academy life - or maybe she didn't want to tell her apprentice that she thought this entire moment was just a period of vulnerability and felt content with living in weakness for just a minute longer. That's what it was after all, what she'd been taught anyway. To open up was to invite exploitation, she simply knew the girl wasn't capable of it just yet so she felt safe being.. weak.. even if just for today.

Of course she also knew that the acolytes of the Empire had been drastically weaker than the first generation of acolytes trained under the reign of her cousin, it was that way by design - even if none of the people, the Sith even, realized it. That was just what an empire was, a means of consolidating power as tightly into a single ruler as one could - and when power was everything, it wasn't enough just to have it all; eventually every goal, every decision, and every lesson was about taking the power others might gain from them so that there was never a risk to your own.

She supposed, listening to Darth Daiara Darth Daiara speak, that the conclusion to her own train of thought was more or less in line with hers.

"Friends, was it?" She asked, circling back to something the girl had mentioned. There was a measure of curiosity, both in her voice and the expression on her face, but there was that same existential dread she had walked in with there, too, somewhere. Some part of her questioned whether the girl actually understood just how much blood there was on her master's hands, especially now, or if she had any idea how much more she planned to coat them with. She glanced over, examining Aradia's face with some degree of concern - more than nearly anyone Aradia should have known just what kind of a person Vesta had been becoming, even if she had no point of reference for who she had started out as.

She tilted her head to the side and then shrugged, repressing the urge to grin.

"I suppose it is." She said, wistfully.
 

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