Private Those Were Halcyon Days

[Vesta]

PARADISE IS LOST​

The era had concluded - the Sith were both dead and here again. An empire had crumbled, an eternity had ended, and warlords had met their match; the third great epoch was coming to an end with the rise of the Maw and the galactic forces that moved to defend the stars against them. Those weak and feeble few had clung to the Sith worlds for its past, not understanding the difference between a point of origin and a thing of significance - of which Korriban had been the former and not the latter - and, regardless of what fate might have befallen the rocky Sith world Darth Daiara had abandoned, the galaxy, particularly its Sith, had been shaken forever. A foundation, millennia in the making, wiped clean - and at last history was just that.

The destruction of the planet in its physical sense hadn't been the final goal she'd had in mind when she had set out to Korriban, but its destruction would have brought about the same change in thinking that was currently rippling through the minds of trillions galaxy-wide with the fate it had suffered following the clash of the Ashlan, Alliance, and Maw forces over the Sith world. The stygian caldera was more or less vacated, its flocks of complacent sheep scattered, and the pollution of the Sith reduced by more than a third - she could live with the Maw and its New Sith Order, for now. Still, she'd given the girl an order and she had disobeyed; for that there needed to be consequences, even if the result had hardly deviated from what she had wanted.

"I expected more from you." She said, her voice slipping out from the shadows nearly as seamlessly as Mori herself did as she simply faded into view, emerging from the darkness like a specter. "Did she matter to you?" She asked, referring, of course, to her lover's master - or former master, the specifics were obscure to her but the general gist of things had been simple enough to figure out with how venomous the woman's words had been towards Aradia and her paramour. "Her words stung - you wouldn't have disobeyed if his comfort hadn't been necessary." Mori speculated with a clear frown, etched into the face she was still wearing from the bout she'd had with Allyson. She was a tad bit taller, height that had lent a subtle element of intimidation that her skeletal features might've otherwise lacked without, but most striking was the seeming state of undeath she looked to be in.

Alive, however, the Sith lord was.

"I ought to have killed you for helping her." She noted with a glare, though the fact that the girl was still alive and no such attempt had been made implied she certainly did not plan to try here either, and her features began to shift - taking on Allyson's face as her own.

"But you will overcome that weakness soon."

 

[Darth Daiara]

Korriban was lost.

Of all the news they had expected to wake up to come morning, it wasn't that. She could feel the way Zaavik was watching her-- searching for any ...cracking or strain in her facade. Truth was, she felt nothing over it.

Nothing worth saying, at least.

Empires rise and fell all the time, how were the sith any different? Ashin Cardé Varanin had taught her that. With her new master likely lost, it was hard not to think back to that exacting teacher that had helped keep her head above water for a time. Ashin had been lost to the noise of the wars too. The sith were dead. Vesta and Allyson were likely, both, dead.

The two wayward apprentices were left with nothing. Some might call that a fresh slate. Neither dared to utter it. She left him in the safe house to secure plans and buy supplies. She needed to get him as far away from Alliance reach as possible. Now.

"I expected more from you." She said,

Her determined steps faltered, fear seizing her as a familiar presence come baring the face of death itself.

"Master." She choked on the word, acid regurgitating through her chest. She took a step back, her heart beat a sudden staccato rhythm. "Help her? No. I was only trying-" To speak to her? It had required holding Vesta back, a fact which she abruptly saw through Vesta's eyes. The force was heavy with the sense of betrayal.

Aradia took a step back as Vesta's features began to shift. Or was this Darth Mori now? Warnings screamed at the back of mind.

"I am sorry," she insisted. "I didn't mean to. I would never try to hurt you. You have to know that. But you're alive. You succeeded?" A pretty way to ask if Allyson was a dead. She held out a pacifying hand, trying to deescalate further.

 

[Vesta]

Physical destruction or a cleansing of fire and light - the result had been the same. A galaxy had gone to sleep the night before to a Korriban that held remnants of Sith and woke up to a dawn without them, at least those that had clung to an outdated mold. Rumors of the conflict spread and had likely exaggerated the world's fate, much as her own demise seemed more than certain - Darth Daiara was far too shocked to chalk her reaction up to an unexpected arrival, that much was clear. She would have been insulted, had the girl seen her in similar situations before - had she been near her on Bastion, even, when two Jedi had thought they could take her. Despite the willingness her apprentice had to feed into fantasy, Mori was far less generous in the room she spared for assumptions.

Poised to speak, she kept her lips tightly shut while the girl sputtered her excuses, instead the Sith merely drew closer until they were hardly an arm's lengths away from each other. This feeble attempt at an apology only stoked the coals that fueled the glowering look on her face, the face of the woman that the girl was now probing over. Heated breath escaped from her lips in a sigh, her eyes closing momentarily in a rare expression of resignation. "I am not so simple that success would be that woman's death, that you are alive should tell you that what I got as much as I desired that I was going to get whether you had done as I had asked or not." She answered, deflecting the question - she hadn't received the answer that she had wanted, not yet. She did, however, seem perplexed by the reassurance her rebellious apprentice had made - it was as much a lie as it was the truth, which was rather confusing for her in and of itself - and let her gaze, as her eyes opened, fall to the gesturing hand with an expression of perplexity acting as its frame.

"That will change." Mori said coolly, lifting her own hand in a manner that most certainly not a gesture - lightning sprung from it and surged faster than the sound of its crackling or the scent of burning ozone could both travel or manifest. It was restrained, the woman didn't want the girl dead, but not from the pain it could deliver. "I have no such reservations." She noted, her incomprehensive look melting away to the disdain she'd felt on Korriban when that shield had kept her back for the short few moments it had. Just as quickly as the electricity had leaped from her fingertips they had faded, her hand lowering while she considered how best to use her current guise against the girl. "Incredible." She said, taking a step back from the girl, with a tone that denoted irony more than anything. "That's how I would describe the gall of that woman to claim she cared so much about you just moments after she was more than ready to kill you."

She paused, letting that sink in for a moment, and then turned her head away.

"Where is she now, I wonder? Certainly not caring about you." She said, asking and answering her own question in the same breath. "It just isn't convenient for her, for them, is it? Caring, I mean." Mori asked, looking towards the redhead as the Corellian's look melted away to one she'd been reticent to wear - the look she regarded as her own face, even if it was just one she'd made to resolve the fact that she didn't rightly have her own at 'birth'. "When it's easy, when you don't have a proverbial knife at their throats especially, they pat you on the head and they smile and say all those pretty things, don't they?" She continued while pivoting from the girl and continuing her change in look, all the way down the clothes she'd been 'wearing'. "I never understood why they bother claiming to care if they don't really - it requires one to care to teach one the error of their ways, and it certainly requires one to care to make sure they're alive."

She glanced towards the girl, her expression one that implied expectations that needn't be said but inevitably would.

"Had I not cared, would I have kept you going after Vjun? Housed you, fed you, began to train you as my own?" She asked, coming to the point of all her prattling. "Imagine my rage when that same girl I took under my wing disrespects me and shows how ungrateful she is by helping a woman that only pretends to care about her for the sake of a boy that is trying to kill me and her both." She said with more than enough venom to spare. "No, I didn't fucking kill her, that is something you will do when you realize how vulnerable you are making yourself by making these frivolous attachments." She spat, turning back towards her. "Someday someone is going to take advantage of that stupid heart of yours and either try to kill you or break it."

"I know from experience. Be grateful that I cared enough to come back and show you the difference."

 

[Darth Daiara]

Aradia took the hit. Her nerves screamed at her to resist and fight back, but she didn't. She fell to her knees and gritted through the pain-- a penance for the betrayal she had not meant by her actions. Beyond it all, she could not help but to think of Zaavik. They had not factored this into their plans.

If Vesta turned on her, would he be in danger?

"Incredible." She said, taking a step back from the girl, with a tone that denoted irony more than anything. "That's how I would describe the gall of that woman to claim she cared so much about you just moments after she was more than ready to kill you."

She grimaced an spat copper from her mouth. It was hard to look upon Allyson's face and hear those words.

It was hard because it was true. Her initial indignation was dwarfed by the mistake she had not meant to commit. One could call it an oversight, but what idiot assists an enemy in the middle of a battle?

That was what Allyson was, wasn't she. A jedi through and through-- a liar. Where was she now? Not here. The point brought speckles of pain across her skin. But it was the pain in Vesta's final words that was the most sobering of them all. The woman could mask it with anger, but she saw it as it was.


Vesta had trusted her. The sith was back, not for revenge, but because despite it all she didn't want to walk away. Aradia saw the person behind the title for the first time.

She stood up, her hand clenched to her torso as she stepped forward. The woman had assumed her familiar form. This was what Aradia saw her as in her mind. The face didn't look much older than her, but in truth Vesta was years younger and just as alone.

"Are you injured?" Her spare hand lifted up, tendrils of dark energy whisping off her fingers.

She never had much to give, but the gesture was there all the same.

 

[Vesta]

Word vomit wasn't a thing that she normally suffered from, and if anything the Shi'ido was painfully mute most of the time and angrily silent the rest, but it seemed that she had, more than perhaps she realized, been bothered by the open disobedience Darth Daiara had displayed on Korriban. Or, at least, she could have been - the purpose behind her ramblings, however, were certainly to paint that picture and make the intentions she wanted to be seen having clear. If the girl's reaction was anything to go by, then, it was obvious that she had gotten her way this time.

She waved a hand dismissively, exposing the mud-like stains that splotched her side while doing so.

"I don't need your pity." She spat, her tone as venomous as the infection such a wound might've given her if it went untreated. She didn't seem concerned, though, only angry - an emotion that was quickly becoming predominant in her day-to-day life. "Keep your essence to yourself, I'm going to live and I can deal with the pain. Your friend was hardly the most talented fighter I've had the displeasure of facing against." Mori added as she stepped away, as if retreating from the smoke-like wisps that curled off of the girl's fingers.

"But, yes, I am injured." She admitted, a hint of embarrassment shining through as she glanced away.

"I'm not here for that, though, and you know it." The Sith said after a momentary pause, taking the time to turn her gaze back onto Aradia. "I am your master, you are my apprentice, when I give you a command you follow it. Is that understood?" She asked, reiterating something that she seemed, outwardly at least, keenly aware was clearly understood. The redundancy of repeating herself was something she often found herself doing, and it was typically for her own sake - she wanted reassurance that someone's mind wasn't changing, or that she didn't simply misunderstand what she thought was being said. More than anything she didn't want to have another apprentice that misunderstood her and cause her even more grief.

"It's becoming painfully obvious that I can't even trust you to do that." She rambled on, making it clear that it had been something she'd expected as if it was the lowest bar her standards could have fallen to. "To that end I'm electing not to trust you. Not with my legacy, anyhow." She revealed, lifting a hand up to point a finger at her chest. "I'm done making plans around apprentices that think they can choose their own petty and salacious desires over their duty as Sith. I abhor the notion of building an order, much less an empire, but if I need to shape my legacy around something, or someone, I can trust, then at least I can expect an order of Sith to outlive me while still acting as I intended."

She looked the girl up and down, her expression shifting to an exaggerated display of displeasure and a look that implied she was thoroughly unimpressed. Her shoulders sagged back as she crossed her arms under her chest, shifting her weight onto her right leg, and contemplated what she was going to do with the girl. There was no doubt in her mind that the little firebrand was going to explode in disagreement with her, she'd watched her unload into her mother without much in the way of hesitation, and the way she had decided to demean the girl went quite a bit further than the overbearing way her mother had tried to control her. In her mind, Mori's that is, the only way she could have lowered Aradia further was if she had decided she wasn't capable of being her apprentice any longer.

Not that she didn't actually still hinge most of her plans on the girl's part in the role of apprentice, but she wasn't here to do anything but punish her for her actions, either.

"Contrary to popular belief, Aradia," She began, choosing to use the girl's actual name for once, "I am not unfamiliar with the kinds of choices you've been making recently, since before you and I crossed paths on Vjun. I was in your shoes, once, had someone just like your sulking friend, too." She continued, her glare sharpening despite the increasingly lax posture she was adopting. "The difference between you and I, between a Sith and someone who hasn't committed, is that I am no longer an item with her."

"I could not commit to what I wanted if I always had someone else there to hold me back, to make me feel something so far beneath me as guilt, for the choices that were necessary if I wanted to continue life as a Sith."

Those were.. hard words to say. It was obvious in the way she'd said it, too, that it was difficult to speak - she spoke them quickly, as if to force the words out before she could suck them back in again. "I'm not even asking you to do that, just to listen to me and do as I say." She repeated, for what was probably still not going to be the last time in however long it was they were going to be stuck together. "We are all vulnerable in our own ways, some in less obvious ways than others, but you need to learn when to overcome that weakness with confidence. Others will know about him, besides me, you have to know that."

"Don't let them turn him into something that hurts you, that gets between us."

She was treading waters she didn't want to navigate, but she was long passed the point of caring now.

"Otherwise you might be forced to do something you will regret."

 

[Darth Daiara]

"Pity?" Aradia echoed back, her expression shifting as Vesta was left to express her thoughts. Her years as a slave had made her very good at the act of listening . Her time with Kaalia made her even better at learning how to respond. That was a skill that Kaalia now found more troublesome than not. Vesta would find herself not having to go up against it at all.

Aradia had nothing to say. She was flabbergasted. One oversight and now she was renounced, reduced, and feeling threatened. She hadn't even raised a hand against Vesta. Allyson had just tripped her up-- the Sith Lord said she understood, yet it all changed after a simple offer.

Aradia withdrew her hand.

"You leave him out of this," she warned, her voice low. "He's not the one getting between us right now. You are. You think that just cause you're strong you're better than me. You're wrong. You're a child. What do you know? I made a mistake ," she spat, stepping forward. Her eyes skimmed the new face her master wore, seeing the woman in that fresh angle for the first time. Her tone cooled.

"You don't know the first thing about emotions, do you? How about I find that ex of yours and let you watch as I put my blade through her. I wonder what would happened then."

 

[Vesta]

Perhaps she had misspoken, maybe pity had been in poor taste, but the Shi'ido had become accustomed to speaking openly, freely, and however she pleased with everyone from her father and uncle to the likes of an apprentice such as her. Darth Daiara may be the girl Mori desired to shape into a killer, a proverbial sword to run herself through upon, but there was no humanization of that bond - she wanted a weapon, a tool, not some self-involved whelp that was too busy focusing on surface issues like whether or not she might have been hurt. Of course she had been hurt - that was why she was mad.

Mentioning Zaavik Perl , though - that had been a mistake that was obvious from the moment she'd heard the words leave her own lips. Under different circumstances, and at a different time, she might've even elected to apologize for the manner in which she'd phrased her warning, which, from the girl's expression, was clearly taken as a threat.

So, of course, the girl responded with a threat. That was fair.

The red that reached her ears didn't care that it was fair, though, and neither did the muscles that narrowed her eyes and furrowed her brow, either. In fact, Mori herself didn't give a damn what fair even meant - the galaxy hadn't given her fair shake from the moment she had left the womb, did Aradia think that all of her issues were spontaneous and of her own making? It wasn't every day that Jedi of all people clamored for child killing, but for Vesta and the rest of the litter of Zambrano younglings, there'd been a special exemption from that kind of morality.

Fair didn't stop two perfectly compatible people from falling out, fair didn't stop two girl's mothers from killing each other, and fair didn't solve anyone's problems, either. "I am a child." She said calmly, blinking several times as she processed the slew of words thrown her way, her tone far more even than she thought it'd come out as. "And perhaps I am wrong." Mori added, wetting her lips with her tongue as she worked her jaw, trying to keep herself at ease by getting rid of the tension in some other way. "But you, you insolent, petulant, little chit, are treading ice thinner than your hair if you think you can speak to me about how well I can understand emotions, or imply that I cannot feel them." There was fire in those words, and the strain in her voice to keep herself from shouting was as clear as it was audible.

The girl had struck a nerve, though it likely wasn't the one she'd thought it'd been.

"I am whatever monster people need me to be because I am tired of trying to be anything else, exhausted of the people who pretend they are these knights in shining armor slaying a dragon to free its hostage from its grip. People like your lover's master, people like the supposed Sword of the Jedi, and even the occasional Sith that thinks the reputation of my last name is justification enough to murder me." She paused, considering whether or not to continue - she sucked sharply through her nose and ran her tongue along her teeth before continuing. "I can live with that, I suppose I chose to become what they presupposed me to be and accepted that life - but I cannot live with people like you, like any of you, treating me like some animal that doesn't know exactly how it feels to have my heart ripped out of my chest and handed back to me in pieces."

"I was simply suggesting that you shouldn't let your feelings towards that boy distract you or decide your actions for you - so you don't get find yourself without a master, or so you don't get yourself and him killed by someone a lot more intelligent that Allyson Locke, who might've simply avoided me and followed you."

 

[Darth Daiara]

Aradia's nostril's flared, her tension palpable.

She turned on a sudden dime, an explosion of energy and frustration as she paced a few steps.

Her lips parted, but her initial question didn't find its way to her throat. What are we? No, she shouldn't think like that. They weren't friends, they weren't family. Loyalty with no connection. Could she do that?

Her lips parted and caught again. But she loved him. Words like that would get him killed. She swallowed hard, her thoughts spinning out from underneath her.

This wasn't fair.

This wasn't right.

If Vesta understood emotion then how could she not see how this tore her in two.


There was no way she could have handled Allyson without betraying something or someone. Once again she found herself wanting to help heal Vesta, not unlike her attempts to save her peers from the purging reach of the jedi. There was a part in her that cared and it didn't matter the position it put her in when she did so...

She didn't want Zaavik's eyes to change. He saw something in her-- like she more than a weapon or tool for a task.

She couldn't jeopardize that.

She couldn't jeopardize this training either. Her fingers tightened around her core, the pulsing burns making it clear she was jeopardizing it with Vesta. Aradia's shoulders caved in, the girl suddenly finding herself to be very very drained.

"I am tired too." She let her arms drop, empty handed as she faced the woman. She got it. She had the same chains placed on her from her inception. Maybe hers were a little lighter, but the jedi tried to drown her with them none the less.

"But I didn't ask you to be a monster. I don't want to be monster. Don't you get it? That's how they win." Her dyed locks caught on her coat as she took a cautious step forward.

"You complain that no one knows who you really are, but... do you even want them to?"

 

[Vesta]

YOUNG GOD​

Victory.

Such a novel word, an immature one. There were no winners in life, everyone came out of it dead. All of them. She let her eyes close slowly and pursed her lips in frustration, both with the girl and herself. It was deeply hypocritical of her to be incensed by the insinuation of her character, but it wasn't the broad public, or even the contradictory hatred that the Jedi had for her that acted as the origin of her anger. "The people you let in behind your walls are the only ones who can really hurt you." She said plainly, avoiding the question.

It was a mantra she'd spoken to the girl from the beginning, initially in a way that was meant to pull her from Kaalia Pavanos by framing the troubled bond the two shared as something she'd experienced before, one that had been said almost exclusively when they'd been alone. Out of context it was little more than a cautionary word of warning, words of wisdom from a Sith lord with what was likely presumed to be so much more interpersonal experience based on the power she had amassed, but it was much, much, more than that with context in mind.

"For all the things I can choose to be, I cannot change how I am seen through someone else's eyes."

The stoicism behind those words were practiced, nearly as prepared as the deadpan stare that her eyes had shifted to when the reason behind it came to mind. "There comes a point for each of us that is unavoidable, Darth Daiara ." She explained, slowly turning away from her as she averted her gaze. "Win or lose we all die, no matter how big, no matter how small - how weak, how powerful, how intelligent, or influential. All of us meet the same end, sometimes many times, but die all the same is what we'll do."

"I can't say I'd call that victory, would you?" She shook her head, then looked back towards her, her cheeks flush with color. "Choosing how we go, that's where I feel victory; knowing that I am the reason, the designer one might say, behind my end, that is all I have left."

"So, no, they won't win. They were never even a concern, I never cared about them. They're never getting in close."

She left the rest unsaid, unconcerned with whether or not it was understood.

 

[Darth Daiara]

"And me?" She countered, feeling as if the world was sand shifting out from under her. It had been an unchallenged fact that if Vesta had lived than she would rejoin her. Zaavik accepted it and she... she wasn't trying to run. Not from Vesta, at least. She hadn't been foolish enough to expect smiles and relief upon seeing her again, but... there was a sudden and unmistakable wall between them. She couldn't find a way through.

"Am I one of them now? I didn't mean to hurt you, none of it was even about you. But I am sorry," she stressed through her teeth. She rocked back on her heels, the distance between them suddenly feeling like a chasm.

"I thought- I thought you got me," she confessed, her voice tight. "I'm not an acolyte anymore. I don't wanna be stamped into a mindless husk-- I am a person, okay? Allyson knew what she was doing when she said those things. I fecked up, what else do you want?" Tired exasperation caught on her lips, an uncomfortable thought drifting through her.

She had let Vesta in. She took a step back, empty palms opened in surrender.

"Fine. You don't forgive me, you can't trust me, your choice. For the record I think it's a stupid choice. But what do I know? I can't electrocute people that frustrate me."

 

[Vesta]

She realized, perhaps far too late in the midst of this ridiculous argument, where this was all heading - and how pointless it had become with the direction it had taken. Forgiveness was something conceptually different to the two of them, Vesta believed it was through actions one achieved absolution while Aradia seemed to think it was as simple as saying a few words. Cursing her own cryptic language, she only sighed in resignation as things began to break down - she had her own reasons for being so indirect, and for being so vague, but the girl hadn't deserved to be thrown through this loop.

"Forget it." She said as she brought a hand up to her face, pinching the bridge of her nose between her index and her thumb. "That isn't what I meant, and I shouldn't have been taking this out on you." Mori added with a frown, her posture shifting to a slouch as her shoulders sagged. It was clear she was irritated, though not immediately with whom or what. "This.. situation.. reminded me of something that made me.. upset. You are not them, and that wasn't the point - keep seeing him if you want, I honestly don't care, just don't get yourself killed or do something reckless again. You're still my apprentice, I would be rather beside myself if I were to lose that." She said, pausing with a glance up towards the sky.

"And, Aradia?"

Another momentary pause, a sigh following shortly thereafter.

"I suggest you do not assume that I care as much about her now as you do about him. She is my past, something you should know I have left behind."

Darth Daiara