#visionhaunted

Well, Tash is a Force-user. A well trained, Dark-sided one, at that. Her instincts are always running high and twitchy. There are thousands of times where her instincts, whispered beneath conscious mind, will have directed her to act before realization.

A prickle of danger at the height of unawareness, mind clouded by strong hands working over her body, digging into her hips, pushing and prodding to distract. The slightest whiff of malice buried under lust and satisfaction, buried under her lover's desire ( two kinds intermingling — the physical and the ambition ). Magic whispers from her fingertips, weaving one of the simplest protection spells she knew ( that she could summon in her diminished state ), and then the Force lashed out at her command, throwing the ornate durasteel knife across the room.

Tash has caught him by surprise. He didn't have the forethought to hold the dagger any more firmly in his own mental grip, and suddenly she's moving, ripping herself out of his grasp and allowing the lightning in her grip to burn through the simple synthsilk wrapped around her wrists. It melts, clinging hot and sticky to skin, and the pain is channeled into the next blow, shoving him clear of the slick-damp sheets and into the durasteel wall.

One must always be on guard against fellow Sith, and this was no exception.

Rolling from her back to her knees, Tash gestures before he can recover, sending his own knife careening through his windpipe. It'd be a slower death, one brought about either by suffocation or drowning in his own blood.

Jaina's pain tolerance is... pretty up there. Between the Yuuzhan Vong breakings that the Myrkr strike team shared through their Force-meld, the shattering of her twin bond with Jacen, and eventually the injuries from fighting Caedus... all of which are events that Jaina pushed through regardless of how much she herself was hurt by it.

The worst, however, was indeed the fight with Caedus. Jaina walks into this fight still injured. Tallying up her injuries there...

Concussive Force-blast to the chest, sending her careening into a durasteel bulkhead and ripping apart the supportive synthmesh supporting her half-healed ribs. If she had been unlucky, the impact of her spine into the durasteel could have paralyzed her right then and there.

Jacen heel-kicking her in her aforementioned half-healed, and now unsupported ribs. Very likely re-fracturing at least one.

Multiple undescribed elbow, knee, or heel strikes to her body as each sought an opening on the other.

Pommel strike to the side of her face with enough force to split skin and break her cheekbone. Later described as "flayed-open", contributing to her difficulty speaking in the aftermath of the fight.

A full-force kick to her abdomen.

Slammed full force into the hot durasteel shielding a fusion incinerator. Another full spine impact, this one adding clothes burning on and into Jaina's skin, singing her hair ( badly enough that it trails smoke as she leaps forward again ), and charring her back.

Compound fracture of her ( left? ) arm. "What looked like an extra joint appeared in the middle of her forearm[.]"

Lightsaber gash across her abdomen, deep enough to sever muscle.

Finally, apart from the immense amount of injuries and physical pain she was carrying at this moment, Jaina also has to contend with the Force-borne awareness that Jacen had dropped his guard, mental and physical, and poured everything into warning Tenel Ka to run. Jaina's lightsaber sinks into Jacen, ending his life.

"[A]nd he dropped at her feet, and Jaina felt nothing at all."

This is unfortunately a note a lot of people like to use as a blunt "Jaina didn't care about her twin when she killed him" stick to hit people with, but it's explicitly stated that, in his death, she could finally feel their twin bond again. Such that was left of it, anyway.

"[N]ow that she could finally feel their twin bond again."

Not only was Jaina in an immense amount of physical pain after the fight with Jacen concluded, but she was in such emotional pain ( and the mental haze that comes with both ) that, when the rescue/recovery reinforcements arrived, she hurled them away instead of allowing them to separate her and Jacen's body.

There's a particular way her twin winds up for a joke. Jaina doesn't need to hear him take in a sharp breath to say it — it whispers across the twin bond they share, first.

"You know, I think that's a new low for you." Of course, even Jaina's sharp words are dulled by the exasperation wandering across the twin bond.

Ziost. The Emperor devoured an entire planet, including the population. Ripped every last scrap of life out of it.

And for a very long moment, Drayan wondered if the Empire had not been strong enough. That something had to have been wrong for their very Emperor to turn on them. Ziost is the adoptive homeworld of the Sith species, and while not strikingly important to Drayan ( as she is Chiss, and as the planet was no longer as important after Korriban was retaken ), it still held great cultural significance within the Empire.

And the Emperor just destroyed it.

Setting foot on Ziost after this destruction was eerie. No wildlife, the plants twisted, gnarled, dead. Petrified. Nothing could rot on Ziost after the Emperor was done — even the bodies were left to remain as they were.

It was a path of logic that she could not follow — the Emperor wormed his way into power, and thus held the title of Emperor. Holding that title, in her mind, was all that was necessary to ensure loyalty. The fact that the Emperor saw fit to devour a whole planet in order to "regain his strength" and to regain control over the Empire...

That made him unfit to be Emperor. How many billions died for his ego? ( a lingering sentiment: perhaps the Emperor who returned to kill Ziost is not the same Emperor they were following all these years — but this does not matter in the end ).

It... is difficult to believe in an Empire that would foster such a sense of entitlement — that an entire planet should die just to soothe hurt feelings.

This, ultimately, is the thing that pushes her belief and loyalty from Emperor -> Empire to Empire above all. The ideal, the belief of an Empire, united, with the pettiest, worthless chaff forced out — this takes the place of following the Emperor's command as his Wrath.

                  leia organa solo suspected anything even akin to normalcy hated her.   every instance she could recollect where life offered her a chance at something ordinary or, it seemed, even simply slowing into a peaceful, regular kind of existence, reality itself would shatter.   far more difficult to bear, that spiral of violence and discord often accompanied her losing at least one being she loved.   again and again.

                  if such a period passed without such a horror, her relief was unmeasurable.

                  something on the edge became more comfortable to her than moments of calm, small events twisting and turning, causing chaos in her life but nothing unrecoverable.   jacen’s absence, his estrangement from his father, both strained her emotions, and how she wished to mend that break… but somewhere deep inside, she hoped it meant nothing would occur to rip more of her family from her arms until she could join them in the force.

[ @visionhaunted -> Mara ] [ unprompted ] "Hey aunt Mara, I actually listened to what you said and got new clothes." he gestured to the slightly mismatched robes he had bought from some mon cal on the nearby promenade deck. He would have just borrowed clothes from his uncle but Mara had slipped some credits into his hands and sent him off to go shopping for himself. Maybe it was her attempt at getting him out there even though he didn't really have any interest in touring the city. Everyone seemed very focused on keeping him out of the loop. He didn't like that. "Here's the rest of the money, I didn't need much of it. I've been trying to get my uncle to tell me whats happening with the order right now but he said I'm still 'on vacation' so he won't tell me. You wouldn't happen to know anything, would you?" [hey so about that time mara told jacen to go have fun and be a KID-]

Alright, so... he didn't seem to have his mother's sense for dress. It was hardly surprising — Mara has spent enough time with the Skywalker-Solos to know the only person with any idea of presentation was Leia herself. Even Luke, her dear husband, felt that his black robes were the height of fashion ( and, as a mental note, Mara needed to collect another set or two before Luke wore his current ones fully threadbare ).

"You know, when you hand credits to a kid," not so much a kid anymore, is he? "and tell him to 'go have fun', you usually aren't expecting to see most of them back." Then again, Jacen's idea of fun didn't typically trend towards the urbane.

Ah, but he thinks he's a little sneaky. Giving her nephew a critical once-over, the Jedi Master shrugged, feigning nonchalance ( not much to feign when she truly is enjoying her own day out in the city ).

The returned credits linger in the palm of her hand, as if half tempting the Solo boy to take them back, go find another adventure out in the city to occupy his restless mind. "Grandmaster Skywalker put you on shore leave, so I suggest you enjoy it while you have it."

“ you can start proving that, by letting go of me —“ pulling her arm from his grasp, words spat through gritted teeth , gaze never faltering as furious eyes burned. anger was its own battle to be fought . and she’d done so with a stiff lip, and tenacious stoicism. “ and it does not do you credit to believe I’m so easily won I would let them sway me . one of us is protecting allana. the other is making the threat against her worse by the hour. you made promises to protect us. but you leave me defenseless. you leave me reliant on you when I do not even recognize you anymore.”

                    that same bond warned her that the door was about to slide open, the teen forcing herself upright, setting a tight and uneasy smile on her lips, the most normalcy she could manage.     ❝  hey… can we talk?  ❞