(L,F&E Interlude 2) An Unexpected Reunion

[kalenath]

((OOC This is a short collaborative fanfic between myself and Setie. The two half sisters Sharlina of the Bladeborn and Setsuna Andal stole a ship from the fleet of Zelkin Infinium and wrought some havoc with it. But now, Sharlina has been dumped in an escape pod and jettisoned. All Sharlina had wanted to do was what her master had ordered her to do. Protect Setie. But when Van had arrived to capture Setie, Seitie hadn't let her sister fight. She had drugged Sharlina and dropped her in the escape pod. And not alone.))

 

Sharlina came back to consciousness cursing. She remembered everything up to her sister hugging her and then the tingle of an injector on her neck.

 

"Stupid... Stupid... Stupid... Setie, you stupid fool. You are not alone! You can't do this alone!"

 

She remembered what Trugoy had said... Setie was so much like Sharlina had been. And it was true. Of course Sharlina wouldn't have drugged anybody, just knocked them out. Sharlina sat in the middle of the pod and shook her head. She ignored the view through the porthole, she ignored the beeping of the instrument panels. She ignored everything except her self loathing at failing her sister. She KNEW what was coming. She KNEW what Setie was going to do. Not the specifics... no, but she KNEW...

[kalenath]

"The irony in this in amusing. I seem to remember you always having to do things on your own." A voice said from nothing. As far as Sharlina could see there was no one in the pod with her.

 

"Always the good Sith. Standing on your own two feet. You never let anyone help you either if you'll recall. Never took your elder's advice. Always running about like some wild child and picking fights. You haven't changed a bit...Istara."

 

((Posted by Setie))

[kalenath]

Sharlina stiffened as the hated voice came to her. Just as arrogant and obnoxious as she remembered.

 

Kaosis... Why here? Why now?

 

She snarled silently but didn't reply. First of all, she was in an escape pod. If she broke anything, she was likely to die. Second, she had nothing to say to the woman who had born her. Nothing!

[kalenath]

"Ah, the silent treatment now?" Kaosis stated as she faded into existence, sitting right next to her daughter. A tell tale blue aura surrounding her. Straight red hair pulled back into that severe bun she always seemed to favor, though a few locks were framing her face, just starting to turn from age. Green eyes glaring at Sharlina like they had in the past when Kaosis disapproved of something. Black robed hanging around making a cold, prim look that was woefully out of place on a woman with fire for hair and green eyes that could make one think of some lively forest.

 

"Suppose that's best. The last time we spoke you stabbed me in the gut with a lightsaber. I'm sure your little blood crazed master was proud when you told him about it." The ghost of Sharlina's mother said bitterly.

 

((Posted by Setie))

[kalenath]

Sharlina laughed scornfully.

 

Trugoy blood crazed? She really does know nothing about us does she?

 

She stared at the image and snorted. This time in derision. Her mother's fashion sense was stuck in the last millennia, as always.

 

"For a seer you never did see very clearly did you? And come ON Kaosis, that look is SO three hundred years ago..."

 

Her voice was cold and unemotional. Her thoughts raced under her cold tone.

 

Force spirits, what did Mama Lizard say? Light against Dark and Dark against Light... Light... Light... I need light power...? great... The one thing I truly suck at...

[kalenath]

Kaosis snorted right back. Almost exactly like her daughter had.

 

"Combative now and sloppy. Not like your one to talk about clothing styles little miss berserker. Always thinking with your muscles instead of your head and acting before thinking. What did I do to get curse with a pair of children so contrary. One that never uses her head and the other uses her head to much! Charging into things like you always do is going to get you killed some day, just like your father."

 

Internally Kaosis bled a bit thinking of Lee. She did miss him, but the hurt left behind from losing him had been healed awhile ago by someone else.

 

Rio...

 

The ghost crossed her arms and fixed a stern eye on her daughter as she shoved that regret away. Kaosis knew very well that even as a force ghost she could be hurt, but she also knew Sharlina was unlikely to have any ability to do so. The girl preferred her sabers and her fists more then her mind.

 

((Posted by Setie))

[kalenath]

For just a moment Sharlina just sat. She hadn't thought of her birth father in a long time. Then she focused, deep within herself. She focused on the feelings she had around Setie, around Trugoy, around Idjit... She smiled, not coldly this time, but tenderly. And when she opened her eyes a wave of power came from her and slammed into Kaosis. It wouldn't destroy a Force spirit. It would hurt.

 

"You really don't know me. You never did." Now Sharlina's voice was sad, a hint of longing in it. A little girl pining for something she could never have. Then her voice hardened. "I have fought Force spirits before. Not that you would care."

 

Her voice held scorn now and betrayal. The betrayal of a daughter left to fend for herself and being punished for fending for herself. Her voice took on a cold, hard tone now.

 

"Now fade out, discorporate. Go away and leave me alone like you always did before. I am not your daughter. Istara Andal is dead!"

[kalenath]

"Ohh, that tickled." Kaosis said with a smile. She was lying through her teeth but right that minute they had bigger fish to fry.

 

"I never knew you because you refused to tell me anything about you Istara." Kaosis said sounding sad. "And of course I cared. Otherwise I would not have been fighting to keep you all those years."

 

Kaosis shuddered then. Remember the number of times she'd gotten disciplined for open defiance in front of the council. Oh they would never have killed her, her visions had always been amazingly accurate in matters not pertaining to herself. That was hard to find in seers.

 

Still there were things so much worse then death...

 

"Anyways, I am not going anywhere right now and I'm not here about you because I know very well you'd rather see me die in a fire. I'm here about Setie..."

 

Kaosis glared at Sharlina and smirked. "That is, surprisingly one thing we have in common. We both adore her. Right now though we have some...issues."

 

((Posted by Setie))

[kalenath]

"You lying witch. You are so full of bantha poodoo. You didn't fight. You let that piece of osik take me. You let him torture me. You let him..." She broke off, shaking her head hard. "You got ideas from him. I saw what you did to Setie. I saw it in the Force." She froze in shock.

 

"Wait... Were you going to do that to me? Did he learn that technique for 'disciplining recalcitrant students' from you?" Those had been his words... and she couldn't repress a shudder even now almost thirty years later.

 

Her voice was disbelieving. She hadn't connected those dots before, but it fit. The Sith who had taken her in and trained her from the time she had been five until he had died when she was twelve had been a sadist. She visibly calmed herself and when she spoke again, it was cold.

 

"Of course you cared. You cared when he tortured us. You cared when he... played with us. You... cared... when he killed us! One by one! Slowly!" Her words came out a scream. Then she calmed again, but her voice was thoughtful.

 

"Of course... It made us strong. The few of us who survived. The way of the Sith. The Strong take from the weak." She nodded. That made sense. But Kaosis's words about Setie made her snarl again.

 

"I don't want to see you die in a fire. I just want you gone. Haven't you done enough? Destroying me wasn't enough for you so you have to try again don't you? Make a better Sith, a more docile, controllable Sith. You witch... I know what I am, a bloodthirsty maniac. Yeah, I am. I have no words for what you are. Evil, heartless, ignorant? Setie is a better person than almost anyone I have ever met. But she wasn't good enough for you was she?"

 

Now she slumped, her hate for her mother consumed by her sadness.

 

"You did your best to break her. To mold her into a perfect Sith. I have news for you Kaosis. Setie isn't a Sith! She is better than any of us! I don't know what she is, she isn't a Sith. At least not a Sith like any I have known. And I have known some strange ones." Understatement of the century.

 

She quivered with barely controlled rage. Then she relaxed, forcing her body to release for its tensioned state.

 

"What you did to me was bad, and I paid you for it on Illum. What you did to her..." She shook her head. "She may be a bad Sith, but she is a good person! I won't let you hurt her again."

 

She cast about looking for the... She snarled as she saw the crystal lying on the floor of the escape pod. Setie had told her about the crystal and what had happened on Dantooine. Her mother's spirit resided in that crystal. All of Istara's rage distilled to that one point.

 

"Goodbye Kaosis." She drew her right hand sword and moved so she could get a good swing at the crystal without breaking anything else.

Edited September 17, 2012 by kalenath

[kalenath]

Kaosis sat silent as Sharlina spewed forth at her.

 

Of course her daughter didn't know how much Kaosis fought. The elder Andal had never brought it up in the girl's presence. Sith, like jedi frowned on family attachments. Kaosis had come to them though with Istara, poor and desperate since Lee's family would not take them in. Kaosis had been desperate and had no one to turn two save the jedi, who everyone knew frowned on family attachments, and the sith, who few knew their feelings on family.

 

It tore her up that her daughter had to pay the price for her own stupid decision. Even dead as she was. She had been a fool and by the time she had realized it there had been no escape for either of them.

 

She had tried, tried to hold on and be strong for her little girl. Then Istara had started showing signs of being force sensitive and everything had fallen apart.

 

To be barred from your child, knowing they were in agony and pain. Knowing there was horrible things happening to them and having guards forced on you to keep you away on pain of death...

 

That was the definition of hell to any parent.

 

Even more when you saw your child again and there was nothing but hate where there had once been love and happiness...

 

It almost made Kaosis weep, but pride had her swallowing tears. She never cried in front of her children, either one. Always when she had been alone and lonely and wondering how she would make it all work. Pride had always been her biggest fault but even now it was all she had to fall back on.

 

So she let her daughter rant, rave, and all but spit in her face. Never uttering a word of the beatings and tortures she had endured for trying to save her little girl, only to fail completely in the end anyway. Never saying that with Istara it had been an act in hopes of reminding her that things were different now, and with Setie...

 

With Setie, Kaosis had been to far gone in the dark for to long to save her...

 

Another failing.

 

Then Sharlina turned to the gem. A gem that like it's twin had been a gift...

 

"What would Setie think of you now Istara?" She asked quietly as Sharlina swung.

 

((Posted by Setie))

Edited June 21, 2012 by kalenath

[kalenath]

"What would Setie think of you now Istara?"

 

Sharlina heard the words and for the first time in decades, she fumbled a strike. Her swing went wide, the monomolecular edge biting deep into one of the seats that ringed the pod but doing no more damage. She released the sword, leaving it where it was, collapsed to her knees and for the first time since she was a very little girl, sobbed in front of her mother. In between sobs, she gasped out words.

 

"You.... Witch.... All I ever wanted to be was like you. Strong, capable, kind... I wanted to be like you. I know it wasn't your fault they took me away. Trugoy explained it to me, after Illum... He was angry with me... When I told him what had... happened. He explained WHY they break the parent-child bond... And later they would have done the same for me and my child... If my kid had survived..." She shook her head and tears scattered around the small pod.

 

"It... It's safer... if not kind to the parents and children. But... Kaosis... you never saw me after I came back... I... I was broken, discarded. Every time you looked at me you didn't see ME you saw someone else... how was I supposed to react? I could never do anything right... All I did was the wrong thing no matter what it was. You never even knew half of what I did, you never asked. I knew you were busy with the other kids, they were hurting worse than I was so... But you ignored me, I was beneath your notice. I was broken and it was my own fault... I wasn't strong enough. So I made myself strong."

 

She looked up at the Force spirit and shook her head.

 

"You had no idea at all. You never noticed. You were... busy. What was I supposed to do? The way of the Sith, the strong take from the weak. I was stronger than you. I... I would have killed you that day. When you put me in stasis for the last time. A proper Sith would have killed you as you lay unconscious. I hated you. You made me weak, you made me unfocused, you made me feel... dirty."

 

Sharlina shook herself and continued.

 

"I hate you more than anyone else. Nothing I did was good enough for you. Nothing I ever said was right. All I ever heard from you was 'Be stronger, be braver, be meaner. Be more vicious, be merciless.' Well, done Kaosis. I am. I am so vicious the Emperor himself took notice of it. The Bladeborn gave me something I could believe in. A cause worth fighting for. A code I could understand. And people who valued me for who I was, not just for what I could do. Power in and of itself is meaningless. It has to have purpose. I learned THAT from the being you call a blood crazed maniac. NOT from you. From you I learned how to hate. I have to say, thank you. The power of the Dark side is all that has kept me alive many times. You didn't intend it that way, but the hate you fomented in me has served me well. It kept me alive in battle, it kept me alive when I miscarried my child, it kept me alive in a Sith prison for six months..."

 

She shook herself again, then in a smooth move was back on her feet with her sword in hand. She sheathed it and then sat again, as far from the force spirit as she could. She stared at Kaosis and her face was unreadable when she spoke again. Her voice was cold and hard.

 

"You are right however. Setie did not wish to destroy you. And I acknowledge her right to do so. I have had my revenge on you, she has not. But you are incorrect in calling me Istara. Istara Andal died when she beat you down and couldn't kill you. I am not her. I am Sharlina of the Bladeborn. She was weak, I am not."

 

With that she sat back and close her eyes. For all the worlds she looked asleep. Her sense in the Force however roiled with conflicting emotions.

[kalenath]

"Now you sound like Marik Fatir...oh wait, Zelkin Infinium. You realize he said something like that to Setie right before she got it into her head to go painting a giant target on her head?"

 

Kaosis was tempted, sorely tempted to point out that she never taught Istara hate. That had been something her first master had taught her. Sadly that lessons had stuck in Istara's head well...

 

It was painful knowing that Kaosis had failed one daughter. She couldn't fail the other.

 

"Setie's breaking Istara, you know it as well as I do. Breaking herself for that blasted boy who doesn't have the sense to see what he's doing. It is the question of if she kills herself, or turns into the monster everyone called her at the academy."

 

There was fear in her tone. Kaosis knew it and shuddered with it. She'd seen that future, along with others.

 

"I would prefer neither, but I'm not sure anyone else can see it but us. Perhaps because we're blood and sometimes only family can see things."

 

 

((posted by Setie))

[kalenath]

Sharlina nodded. Her tone was still cold however.

 

"Nice. Very nice vocal manipulation. You almost have the tone of the grieving and worried mother down. You need to work on the inflection of the fear however. It's not quite there yet. Setsuna is a lot stronger that you or anyone else seems to realize. And don't start trying to empathize with me or gain my trust. You won't."

 

She thought hard, focusing her thoughts.

 

"I don't question that Setsuna needs help. But we are not not family and we are not blood. And from what I have seen, your help is the last thing she needs. Or did your wonderful plan go a bit awry when you tried to possess her on Dantooine?" Sharlina clucked a bit, sounding very much like Kaosis for a moment.

 

"Sloppy, very sloppy Kaosis. She beat your control even without what little aid I could give her. Do you really think this Zelkin scum can hold her? Or is that what you are counting on? Her losing control?" Sharlina shook her head.

 

"She is much more likely to kill herself trying to save him. I don't know what you have seen and I don't care. Setie is a good person. I have seen too few like her in my life. The last one I met like her was the mother of an enemy. An honorable enemy. Maria was strong, caring and absolutely devoted to her family. The way a mother should be." Her voice didn't change inflection but the barb flew anyway.

 

"Don't think that I am going to trust you or anything you say. And if you value your existence, don't try and possess me. You would regret it." Bladeborn were trained for all kinds of situations. And hostile Force spirits were known to attempt to take over powerful Sith on occasion.

[kalenath]

Kaosis sighed then. "The hard way it is."

 

Before Sharlina could move Kaosis leaped forward and a ghostly hand drove right into Sharlina's skull. She knew her daughter was not likely to believe or care about a single thing Kaosis showed her but she would at least remember them.

 

There were so many different points. All resting on a fight between the Fatir twins. It was like a broken recording playing again and again. The only difference was what Setie did in each.

 

In one she simply sat screaming for the twin's to stop as they killed each other. In another she teamed up with Jan, another with Marik. Still another she ran into the middle of them and they both cutting her down, to busy fighting with each other to know or care what happened to their friend.

 

One showed the twins screaming horribly. Setie's face cold as ice as she took them apart. Another flashed by of Setie doing something to the pair with golden whips. Still another flashed by of her just doing something to Marik, another of just Janelle.

 

"So many futures eh? This one is the absolute worst though."

 

The swirling pictures stopped on Setie, covered in gore and screaming in agony. Bodies of everyone littering the ground, broken like dolls.

 

"She lost control here...something that is very bad when one has power over life and death like she does."

 

Kaosis pulled her hand back then and stared at Sharlina.

 

"You and me falling in the dark...that is sad but people can survive it. Setie falling, would be like letting Death incarnate start walking around. I tried to show her horrors in hopes that she would never commit them herself, due to remember how it pained her so. Surrounded by hate as she is now though. I do not know if she can manage to keep holding onto to the light."

 

Kaosis snorted then. "But then I'm wasting my breath. You only care about defending Setie, keeping her in one piece and not having her hate you. You'd sooner kill everyone then discuss emotions. So I'll save my breath and leave you be."

 

A tear escaped her iron will then and her image looked tired, old, and broken instead of her usual fierce, strong, and defiant ways.

 

"For what it is worth though. I am sorry for your loss." She stated as she faded away, her finally words flowing out of nowhere.

 

"I know very well what it's like to lose a child. After all...I lost one and the second one is about to fall..."

 

((Posted by Setie))

[kalenath]

Sharlina didn't react as Kaosis pushed the visions through her. She didn't react at all. Only once Kaosis had vanished back to wherever it was the harpy had come from did Sharlina even move. She shook her head.

 

Force users, especially powerful Force users could make insanely intricate illusions. Illusions that were indistinguishable from reality. Or Force visions. She couldn't trust anything Kaosis told her, or showed her. The woman could not be trusted. Of course Sharlina didn't really trust anyone except herself and her battle kin. Maybe Setie...

 

But she had to agree with Kaosis on one thing. Setie did need help. If she did fall, BAD things would happen. That was obvious even from the moment Sharlina had first seen her sister. Of course she didn't have to agree aloud...

 

She turned towards the controls, looking for a com unit and hoping that someone could come get her. For a moment, she looked at the red crystal. Then she sighed, picked it up and placed it in one of her belt pouches.

 

Why do I know I am going to regret not destroying this...

 

She shook her head, then keyed a distress call on the frequencies that the other fleets had used. The ones fighting Zelkin's people. Then she sat back to wait. And meditate on what she had seen. She knew her mother was an evil deceitful harpy. But she also couldn't shake the feeling that the older woman had been sincere on giving her condolences. That shook her a bit, just a bit. Then she focused herself and sank into meditation.

 

((OK, how was that for a family reunion? And you thought yours got heated sometimes Sharlina will be heading out as soon as someone picks her up, but be warned, she is very unhappy atm.))