Private Unfinished Business

[Ishani Dinn]

Nezamiyeh, Chaldea

By now Ishani knows that she is dead, but she refuses to lie. To keep herself from dissolving back into the Force, she consumes. Other spirits, other entities, she devours them to maintain her individuality.

Some force (she doesn't know if it's the Force, or the Netherworld itself, or perhaps something nameless) must have deduced that she's staying because of unfinished business. Before she knows it, her spirit is being propelled from planet to planet, returned to places she's been, people she knew, specific moments in time. Anything with any significance to her is dredged up. She's even presented with a few alternate universes where the outcome of her life was different in some way.

Was all this somehow supposed to make her accept that she's dead? She wants to live. Whatever is doing these things to her, it doesn't seem to understand that. But she has no choice but to go along with it, dragged along a thread wound around the stars like pins on a map.

Right now she's on Chaldea, apparently in the present. She's standing in the middle of a supermarket, arguably the most mundane of locations. Someone pushes a cart toward her, and it passed right through her. She's incorporeal. Great.

At the far end of the aisle, she sees her mother. Her hair is grayer than she remembers, her face more lined. She looks at the label on a can of soup.

"Mom," Ishani says, but her mother doesn't react. Figures. Her mother isn't sensitive to the Force. She can't see or hear her daughter's badly burned, hunchbacked ghost trying to make contact. So what's the point of bringing Ishani here? Just to taunt her with the image of her aging mother, now deprived of a child? Is the Force gloating?

"Mom, I'm sorry," Ishani says anyway. "I wish I had just left. I should have gotten off the planet, but I wanted to play hero. I wanted to feel like I mattered."

Mom is really staring intently at that soup can. Is she having a hard time deciding whether to get it, or something?

Kyra Perl​

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra didn't like lingering in core world. It was irrational, but the reminders of what had had been were too easy to come by. Once she remember that, she remembered what she had done.

And then she felt shitty all over again.

She grabbed her canned soup and stacked them one after another in her cloth bag. Save our world postures were planted all over the grocery's front windows. Didn't matter what planet you went to, one constant remained the same-- plastic lived a thousand years. So do soup cans, if you stored them right.

You could never have too much soup cans.

She plopped them in until the handle dug into her sensitive pink skin, a voice breaking her internal musings.

"Mom, I'm sorry," Ishani says anyway. "I wish I had just left. I should have gotten off the planet, but I wanted to play hero. I wanted to feel like I mattered."

A weird topic for a grocery store, she couldn't help but to quip, her eyes scattering up to catch the person speaking. Her whole expression caught and twisted. She couldn't help the horror, never mind the shock.

She only stared for a moment before she caught her senses and forced herself to look away. It was only then that she could make sense of the burned, damaged mess of the figure five paces away from her.

She looked like she belonged in a war zone.

Because she did. Kyra paled and swallowed hard, trying her damnest to pretend she hadn't noticed anything as she turned to scurry by the woman to get away.

Ishani Dinn

 

[Ishani Dinn]

Ishani didn't even notice the pink-skinned redhead standing a few feet away, rather aggressively collecting soup cans in her bag, until the girl tried to hurry past her. The specter was standing (er, floating?) right smack in the middle of the aisle, which was relatively narrow. If she wanted to avoid going anywhere near Ishani's war-torn ghost, she'd have to scrape along one of the shelves on either side.

In the process, the redhead knocked a can off a shelf. It fell to the floor and rolled out of the aisle into the busier walkway beyond, causing another shopper to trip and fall. Well. That's a lawsuit.

Ishani's gaze followed the redhead. Could she see her?

She glanced briefly back at her oblivious mother, still staring at that soup can (either very lost in thought, or very tired), then turned and started to follow the redhead.

"Hey," she called out. "Hello? Can you hear me? I know you can see me!"

Kyra Perl​

 

[Kyra Perl]

No no no. They hated the force on this world. This was a grocery store! Kyra couldn't help how she glanced back, wide eyes panicked as she tried to pretend she wasn't staring down a dead person.

Well. More like a force ghost.

We should be respectful of those that came before us. Only those strong with the force can linger, and if they do it is for a reason. Old lessons she didn't care to remember rang through her. They didn't teach her how to tune them out, only how to understand. How to help. Well Kyra didn't want to help.

She wanted to buy her soup and leave.

Her head shook in subtle rejection of it all as she turned a corner and-- "Oof!" She collided into another the bread in their hands smushed by her shoulder. Two of her own cans fell out of her bag. One landed on her foot.

She cursed and hopped, uttering a wild apology as the person handed back a dented can of Blue Lagoons.

 

[Ishani Dinn]

Unbothered by the chaos the redhead was unleashing upon the unsuspecting supermarket, Ishani hovered near her and the other shopper she had collided with.

"You can see me, and you can hear me," she said, punching out each word clearly and deliberately. "I know it. I can tell."

But merely insisting that this stranger could sense her wasn't going to get her anywhere. And anyway, what exactly did Ishani want out of this interaction?

"Listen, please. I don't know how much time I have left. I keep getting dragged to all these places and time periods and... and this is probably one of the less crazy ones." She tried to maintain her cool, but emotion was leaking into her voice. Grief, pain, regret, guilt. "If you can hear me, you can help me. Please."

Then softer, like an echo.

"Please."

Kyra Perl​

 

[Kyra Perl]

Goosebumps rose along her arm. She stared down the dented end of her soup can, a thousand thoughts runnings unexpressed through her head. Finally she sighed and inclined her chin ever so slightly, gesturing for the spirit to follow.

See this was why she stayed away from the core. She couldn't escape who she was, even if she wanted to.. Kyra lead the spirit through the aisles, glancing back just once to make sure it followed. She the object of their fixation was being left behind but they could just deal.

She had soup to pay for.

She woobled in line, eyes twitching towards the empty air Ishani Dinn 's occupied. What in hell happened to her? Kyra had the sinking suspicion she didn't want to find out. She stacked the cans one by one onto the belt, placing the denting one on top.

"Came that way," she lied to clerk. "Discount please."

 

[Ishani Dinn]

For a moment she thought it was all for nothing. This person was just going to ignore her, and it wasn't like there was anything Ishani could do about it.

But then the redhead made a subtle motion with her chin, gesturing. Ishani watched as she walked in the direction she had indicated, then realized what it meant.

She followed her to the checkout aisle. The clerk looked at the redhead with the dry, dull stare of someone who is merely going through the motions, then wordlessly rang her up, discount included.

In spite of everything, Ishani laughed.

Kyra Perl​

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra nearly sushed her-- the dead person-- but locked herself down. No one else could see her but her and she would like to keep it that way. At the very least the alarmed flair of her nose would be a subtle reassurance that Ishani's existence was real to someone.

Kyra grabbed her loaded bag and slung it over her shoulder, a snuff to her step as she walked out. It was a pretty planet and that was half why she chose it. She could only see so much of the dirty guts of the outer rim before she grew homesick for blue skies and, hell, normalized cleaning schedules.

But there was a real reason she had picked this place, and now it was a wrench in everything as they hit fresh air. Ishani would be forced to follow a little further, her can clacking as she went. She paused at the doors of a comfortable transport ship and gave a paraniod look at the way she had come.

Without giving Ishani a chance to step in, Kyra closed the hull doors behind her. Spirits could go through walls. "You trying to get me in trouble out there? I thought the force wasn't a thing here, nevermind--" she gestured up and down the force spirit's form.

 

[Ishani Dinn]

Ishani followed the redhead all the way to a transport parked outside, only to have the doors slammed in her face. For a moment Ishani was exasperated, trying to figure out how to get in, when she remembered she was a ghost. Right. She knew that.

Passing through the vehicle's hull, she managed to "sit" in the passenger seat next to the redhead. She wondered if she'd be able to stay inside if the transport took off. Probably, if she concentrated hard enough, though it seemed like more trouble than it was really worth...

"You trying to get me in trouble out there? I thought the Force wasn't a thing here, never mind--"

"Sorry if I'm dead and desperate," Ishani muttered. "Imagine my shock that anyone in there was able to see and hear me. I thought I was going to be stuck talking at people rather than to them."

She folded her arms. "I don't even know why I'm here. Well, I sort of do. This is, uh, my homeworld. My hometown, in fact. I grew up here, and my mom was in there, looking at soup. So I guess I was there to see her, but she can't see me, so..." She trailed off, lost in thoughts and feelings again.

If she couldn't figure out what she was supposed to do here, what did she want to do? For this chick to deliver a message to her mother? How would that even work? She didn't want to drag a stranger into her private business, and she didn't want to upset her mother, but it seemed the only way.

"Do you think you could, um... deliver a message for me?" she asked.

Kyra Perl​

 

[Kyra Perl]

"Sorry if I'm dead and desperate," Ishani muttered. "Imagine my shock that anyone in there was able to see and hear me. I thought I was going to be stuck talking at people rather than to them."

Kyra's mouth slammed shut, sobered by the reminder that Ishani was going through far more than she was at the moment. Yanno. Being dead and all. Kyra listened to it all, softening just enough to sigh again and string her bag off her shoulder.

It really wasn't an unreasonable request. Why was she being a monster about it? Tired lines appeared on Kyras facec as she collapsed into her seat.

"I dunno. Maybe?" She relented, peering out the windshield. "I mean like does she even know. About you--" Another gesture to the force spirit standing before her.

 

[Ishani Dinn]

"I don't know," Ishani admitted. "Maybe?"

The main problem was, she didn't know how much time had passed. "I, uh, died at Tython. The planet was attacked by the Brotherhood of the Maw. I think they were trying to destroy it. Do you know how long ago that happened?"

She didn't know how in-the-know this woman was, but she figured if a planet was nearly (or successfully) annihilated, the news had to be pretty far-reaching. Unless the attack was still going on, in which case maybe not.

Kyra Perl​

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra had meant the fact Ishani was force sensitive, but she supposed the dead thing was important to know too... She rubbed at her face, the skin dragging as she took in the recount of her death.

"Ah." Was all she said to that, not half as phased as she rightly should have been. If anything the exhaustion seemed to grow. She rubbed at two pressure points on her temples, a turned to stare blankly at her controls.

"It's been a week." She glanced up to see the burns across Ishani's face and quickly looked back away.

"How'd you, ah. Get there?" She asked tactfully, trying to piece together just what side of that battle the spirit had been on. If at all. All the while she gave no hint to how she could converse so easily with a being of the force. She certainly looked mundain, at least. She most certainly had no weapons of the force on her.

 

[Ishani Dinn]

A week. That was much better than she thought it would be. If she'd had lungs to breath with, she'd have sighed in relief.

"I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time," she replied. "I went there to look at relics and artifacts. In fact, I was exploring an ancient tomb with someone when the attack began... I decided to stay and fight to defend the planet. That was a huge mistake. The battle was completely insane. There were earthquakes, storms, bombs, massive armies clashing on the ground... I got hit by an explosion, then fell down a chasm. Not something you can just walk off."

She was all too aware of how the redhead kept looking away from her. In life, Ishani had been quite sensitive about her appearance. She'd never believed it when people told her she was pretty or beautiful. Well, she definitely wasn't beautiful now.

"Look, my mother won't take too well to someone showing up claiming to have a message from her daughter's ghost. So, there are other ways to go about this. Like, uh... a last request, or something. You can say that you knew me when I was alive."

Kyra Perl​

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra rose a brow to that.

Simple. Realistic. Less likely to get her run off the planet. "Fine," she relented, turning to buckle herself in. "But lunch first, and you have some explaining to do if we're gonna make this believable. Get to talkin', your name?" She glanced at Ishani, blue eyes attentive and lively as she backed them up and drove away.

 

[Ishani Dinn]

"Ishani Sibwarra," she replied. "My mother is Charisse Threepwood, and my father is Senator Toloth Threepwood. He represents Chaldea in the Alliance Senate."

Those were the basics of who her parents were. What else would she need to know? "They live in a farmhouse outside of town. Here's the address..." After rattling off the numbers, she thought for a moment. "I guess I could've met you at Tython and delivered my last request to you. Uh, the message I want sent is..."

She trailed off, obviously trying to find exactly the right last words she might ever say to her mother. It was difficult, to say the least. "Tell her... Arcturus Dinn is probably looking for her. If he hasn't contacted her already, that may mean something happened to him. She's going to have to find the twins and make sure they're all right. Marcus and Eloise. They were with their father, probably aboard his ship, the Leviathan. And... tell her that I love her and Dad and Ganner, and that I'm sorry it had to be this way. At least I died trying to help."

Kyra Perl​

 

[Kyra Perl]

Concise. Seemed Ishani wanted to be out of here as much as Kyra did. The girl had become so risk adverse she didn't realize how unkind she was being.

Three years ago Kyra would have never been angry with someone asking for help. She would have slowed this down, she would have asked questions, she would have tried to find other ways to help. Kyra of three years ago would have been at Typhon.

Back then Kyra didn't know what fear felt like.

She tightened her grip on the controls, her knuckles turning white.

"Alright. Considered it done." She glanced over at Ishani, then nodded in begrudging reassurance. And then came a pregnant silence, her hands wringing the knob between her fingers.

Say it.

"Are you... going to be ok?"

 

[Ishani Dinn]

What kind of question is that? I'm dead, Ishani nearly snapped. But at this point she was too emotionally wrung out to truly feel angry.

"I don't know," she replied. "I've been trying to find a way back. Other people have managed to do it before me, so there's got to be a way. But until then, all I can do is try to make things right from here."

Kyra Perl​

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra parked at the end of her ship's landing pad and stared blankly at the silver hull her dad had fixed up for her. Escaping death was beyond her, her formative years ended at her trials and nothing further.

If there was a really a way to defeat the netherworld, the jedi weren't talking about it. That didn't spell anything good for Ishani.

Kyra kept her mouth firmly shut.

"How did we met?" She unbuckled and ducked towards the door, her bag slung over her shoulder.

 

[Ishani Dinn]

"Could you say that you were on Tython when the invasion started, and you met me right before I died?" Ishani asked. "Or, chit... That might sound too convenient, and they could look you up to see if you were really there. Maybe you were hitching a ride on my ship, and I delivered you somewhere safe, but then left to go fight at Tython and told you to deliver the message if you heard I'd died there?"

She really didn't know enough about this chick to guess the circumstances under which they most likely would've met. Hell, she didn't even know the redhead's name. "What's your name, by the way?"

Kyra Perl​

 

[Kyra Perl]

"Kyra," she grimaced, last name left off as she left the smaller transport for her living quarters. She mulled over the suggestions as she let them in, an ambivalent AI chirping into alert status as the lights flickered on.

Make yourself at home, She nearly offered to the dead person. Her hair hid another grimace.

"That wouldn't work. Never came back isn't the same as definitely dead, she'll never stop hoping." Was that such a bad thing? The pessimist inside her thought it was. The sooner the mother swallowed the truth, the faster she'll heal and move on.

The soft chatter of an excited sand cat rounded the living room corner. Popsicles pattered around Kyra's feet, forcing Kyra to take large and careful steps to the counter. "How much does she about about your... obvious force sensibilities?" She phrased delicately, unloading her cans onto the counter.

Popsicles jumped up and managed a headbutt into Kyra's chin, her inquisitive eyes locking on the spirit. Kyra spat cat hair from her mouth.