[member="Kaden Mantis"] took control of a situation in free fall, and Gray seemed to do nothing but give them the gift of his silence. Then he did the unthinkable, the very thing Kaden would kill lesser men for attempting on his Yasha.
Yasha’s body went as ramrod straight as the pillars of marble, which held up the throne room’s vaulted ceilings. Her lungs hacked and yanked at the air, trying to find purchase in the atmosphere which became as thick as a young woman’s many rejections.
Yasha’s armour was, from a goran’s perspective, without reproach. Her buy’ce, which laid on the table, was flawless in protecting her from the light which all but the blind took for granted every day. Against a moment of open and cathartic tenderness, Yasha had no defence.
Her father, by all accounts, was as vicious a killer as cancer after radioactive exposure. Preliat Mantis had the force of the innocent being wrenched out of a decompressed airlock. There were times in Yasha’s childhood where her father was, above all, tender with his daughter. He held her, he sang to her, he cuddled her up in the night when the dreams became entities of near-torture. As much as Preliat Mantis was capable of being a good father, he was not a good man.
The older he and his daughter got, the more dangerous and damaged he became, until it boiled over and he abandoned Mandalore… and his daughter… for what felt like the final time.
Yasha shook as [member="Gray Raxis"] braved the banes of the Netherworld itself, and embraced her. At first, Yasha’s katar snapped from its’ wrist sheath, yet within two mere seconds, the knives which saved them all disappeared. Ragged breathing peppered the air around Gray and Yasha as the future Mand’alor broke utterly against the only assault she’d never witnessed.
Abject, altruistic kindness.
Salt water spilled down her cheeks onto Gray’s armour, as Yasha sunk her head into the crook of his neck and shoulder, and sobbed. Upon contact with the back of her head, flashes in the dark. Images of the depths of Hell, a constant thread of every place she’d ever been attempting to expel her.
Still the whisper. That horrible, gut-wrenching whisper. Yasha Mantis had not been abandoned by the Force. She had been forcibly removed from it, by powers beyond understanding. Removed and set wholly apart, never to know the essence of surrendering to a connection so intuitive it gave the blind eyes and the wise their wisdom. Hatred removed it. Hatred alone worked to destroy the girl Baiko no Kaho loved as a daughter. The hate was not Yasha’s, but it clung to her, the last vestige of two parents, who hated the Force more than they loved their beautiful little girl.
Slim, strong arms wrapped around Gray’s chest. Beyond the stammer of her secondary tongue, and the hiccups coming from her chest, two distinguishable words:
“Teach me”.