Compromised
Makeera is what I myself am... Jallira listened to the words over again, shuddering. She wasn't sure exactly how true it was - so many measures had been taken to keep her from knowing that - but it felt true. However much of her memory was a construct, Jallira was effectively an idealised construct of herself; the her she was supposed to be, and could have been without... ...your former master? Garr. That was the key and the problem. Book had not been lying. She knew Book had not been lying; lying mind-to-mind was difficult at the best of times, and Book had no reason to. Plus her panic at having inadvertently slipped just solidified the truth of what she'd said. Jallira had been trained by the sadist who had helped to start the new variant rakghoul plague, and fragments of his personality lived behind walls in her head along with whatever he'd taught her ... whatever he'd done to her. At least there is peace, sister. That was true, at least to a point; whatever had happened had apparently been so bad that it had turned her into that vaguely remembered meeping people-shy emotionally crippled mess of a young woman, and now she didn't remember it, and she was ... better. The only reason she was not quite in the same situation as Makeera had to do with her own insistence that memories be constructed to hide the holes. After all, when one had no life experience to fall back on, what option was there than to latch onto the first strong, good thing you find and cling to it ... particularly when the previous, better-established personality already had a track record for the same behaviours (with Kot, in that case)? Jallira, at least, had been spared the uncertainty of who she was and where she had come from. ...For awhile, anyway. Now, though, the uncertainty was there, and growing. Her life experience was intact - was, in fact, better than it had apparently been. Putting together pieces of the puzzle, she'd been nearly as unschooled as Makeera, with no apparent good reason for it. On that basis, how many of her memories of study, practical training and simple interactions with others were constructed? How much of her life was a lie? Master. Singular. I only had one. ...Ever? She'd been ordered to put it away, not dwell on it. She'd only start poking around for the cracks and loose threads that existed in any fabricated memory if she dwelt on it, and then all that work would be for nothing. Given the fragments on top of whatever memories ... she remembered how close she'd been to running, or worse, before the memories got sealed away. Given added stressors, what would stop her if the walls came down? Makeera is what I myself am... But how was she supposed to not think about it when a less fortunate version of herself was placed in her care? Jallira sent the private message to the author of the medical report she'd received, then moved on to a formal report for the Arbiters and Archon. I am also emotionally - or perhaps psychologically - compromised... She hated doing it. She was useless here, however, and she knew it. Worse, she was a liability. The attack Keathes had launched on Jallira's mind during an attempted assessment of Makeera's state had only made matters worse for Jallira. Any more of that, and ... it wasn't really herself Jallira feared for. She doubted that any work she did under the influence of fragments of Moyval Gesh, or a breakdown of the walls in her own mind while she was in someone else's, would do anything but harm the patient. It still took everything she had to press 'send' on that message. Then she went back to trying to distract herself - with innovations, with cooking, with patient care that was not a less fortunate version of herself. If ordered to take the lead, she would. She just hoped that if it came to that, both patient and healer would survive the experience with some measure of mental soundness.
