Private When the Light Doesn't Come

[Efret Farr]

Legacies were an obsession to many of the galaxy's sentient beings, but few were more intimate with the concept on the whole as anthropologists—Jedi or otherwise:

How to ensure one.

Which ones lasted. Which didn't.

Which ones empowered the dead. Which ones trapped the living.

She had once been enamored with legacies from her academy days until the moment she answered the call for war with the Dark Empire. From that moment on, there had been no time for research as she had done it before—only for the headlong tumble from one battle or preparation to the next; on and on until she finally stood and realized that, like a stone saltating from a mountain's headwaters towards the sea, the edges that had made her her had worn off and away.

In the months to come, the Jedi she had known would tell her that they didn't recognize her without realizing that she had stopped recognizing herself well before her fall from their supposed grace.

<Maybe I feel guilty should-not then,> she mused after letting out a shuddering sigh. If the towering Empress was right, as every synapse in Efret's mind had suspected that she was since long before meeting her, then the former master had never been taught true serenity. If Jedi philosophy radiated out from fear of the Sith, how could any master or knight, or even padawan, be expected to ever not be afraid of any other threat, real or imagined?

<Teach-me resist fear, can you?> Her brow creased softly under the hope of the question.

She was almost desperate for Mercy to say yes, even if the promise was a lie; wanting so much to submit to the authority of one she thought wiser that she dismissed the steps to overcoming fear that she had already taken in just the last few hours.

Mercy​

 

[Mercy]

Efret Farr

The creature walking next to her was not familiar with guilt.

Yes, the concept, that she knew. Because from her very youth people had tried to talk her into feeling guilty about things. That was the way it went when you were born a princess, but had the heart of a warrior. The little girl that was so fierce, jumping from rock cliffs into the water deep down, the one who enjoyed climbing trees and wrestling with boars in the wild... would never have made the perfect princess.

And they had never made her forget it.

<Maybe I feel guilty should-not then,> she mused after letting out a shuddering sigh. If the towering Empress was right, as every synapse in Efret's mind had suspected that she was since long before meeting her, then the former master had never been taught true serenity. If Jedi philosophy radiated out from fear of the Sith, how could any master or knight, or even padawan, be expected to ever not be afraid of any other threat, real or imagined?

"Guilt is a useless emotion, darling Efret." Mercy said quietly. The former Jedi didn't know her well, not yet, but the quietness was uncharacteristic from a creature who was brash and wild beyond belief.

"Kill it inside you as soon as you can. It is a chain that others will use around your neck, until you find one day that you are choking yourself with it without their prompt."

They walked some more until Mercy made them pause on a hill.

From here on they would have a grand view of the Netherworld in all its chaos and splendor. It was the way she had said. Near them, close by, the realm was almost... at peace. A dream like quality of mesmerizing lights, wisps shooting through the area, ground that was like ink but solid. The farther it went from them however, the more it changed.

The hungrier it became, the more bestial it warped into, until far in the horizon they could practically see the first gigantic swords cleaved into the start of an endless desert.

Mercy looked at it with longing in her eyes until Efret spoke up again.

<Teach-me resist fear, can you?> Her brow creased softly under the hope of the question.

She chuckled softly and turned to face her. Mercy's hand, large and terrible, made to do great violence descended down. And then gently patted Efret's head again.

"I already am, silly. I won't abandon you after having just found you. You can count on me."

 

[Efret Farr]

Efret was not aware that a small, choked sob squeezed out of her throat when Mercy's palm came down on her head.

Her brow furrowed deeply, her hazel gaze searching through the windows of her natural vision for something not in the empress' fire but reflected by it. It was the excruciating look of a woman fighting a silent battle against everything she the Jedi had ever taught her.

There was no deception that Efret could see or feel in the way Mercy held her own body. The silent words sung by her rippling muscles, each of which could break Efret like less than a dry twig, echoed the shapes of her lips. The mountain felt protective over the valley.

She also recognized the truth of Mercy's warning about guilt. It was already her chain. She had already begun to choke herself with it on multiple occasions in the past, but the horror wasn't just that she did it unprompted—that she had become her own slavedriver in the absence of the Jedi hierarchy; it was that she hadn't noticed what she had been doing.

Not at all.

Slowly, she nodded. <Future, I trust you.> She didn't yet, not entirely, but she would. She was committed to it.

<Home, take-me,> she repeated her desire from the sacred swamps. <You and yours, Core change-into what, allow me see.>

Mercy​

 

[Mercy]

Efret Farr

But when a sob escaped Efret's depths, Mercy didn't leave it there and instead gently wrapped her thick arm around her frame.

One moment later and she'd unceremoniously attempt to hug the former Jedi Master.

"There, there..." Mercy would murmur, stroking her hair gently. "It is okay, I have you." Golden eyes watched the Netherworld around them even as she attempted to give Efret some measure of solace. These things were not difficult. While Mercy did not, in her heart of hearts, feel the tug and squeeze of emotions in the same way that others did... Mercy knew what sentients needed.

The same thing a small girl on Tion had needed when she walked face first into reality.

She'd try to kiss Efret's forehead and then nodded.

"My world... is very different from what you are used to. In a way... it is uglier." Mercy warned her, honest, in all things and ways. "But also more truthful. I will show you... and you can decide for yourself what you prefer."

Then when Efret gave her permission again? Large shadows erupted out of Mercy's back as the grafted spirits woke up from intent. They'd wrap around them both... and once more they'd be speeding away through the Netherworld.

Towards the new future.

Towards the Burning Core.