Broken Shards

[Salem Norongachi]

Norongachi let a cold smile wash over his face as she screamed at his back. She hadn't changed, in personality at least but her presence in the Force was so diminished that she was merely a ghost of what she should have been. That thought bothered him but he filed it away for later and then turned to face the raging Witch.

"A needs to an end," He responded. "I would have sought you out after my little farce but I was otherwise detained, I thought you dead when I awoke."

 

[Temp 2]

"A needs to an end," Omega remarked, finally turning to offer her a glimpse of that all-too-familiar self-satisfied smirk. The sight of it was enough to make Siala's blood boil, and the rest of his words were lost amidst the thunderous pounding of her heart. Rage coiled and roiled within her, twisting insidiously through her thoughts, until, without another word, she stepped forward and brought her hand around to crack against the man's cheek with a thunderous rapport.

"Bastard," she hissed through bared teeth, "You dare give me that? A need to an end?" Venom dripped from her words as she shook her hand, seeking to restore a semblance of circulation to her stinging digits, and her eyes flashed hatred toward the man she had once named her mentor. Words, flecked with poison and disgust, fell from her tongue, "I hunted them across the galaxy because I thought they murdered you. Because you let me believe it. I sacrificed everything! And you stand there telling me it was a need to an end? I ought to feed you to a kath hound, you pathetic scrag of a male!"

The words took a lot from her, and as the last insults tumbled from her tongue she stood there, chest heaving and ever glaring daggers at the man who had betrayed her.

 

[Salem Norongachi]

The blow brought a ringing to Salem's ears but did not move him. He tilted his head back up and his eyes grew hard, cold, a stare the Witch would remember from their first confrontation outside a cantina on that fateful night. Norongachi swallowed the bile that threatened to rip [member="Siala Kai"] apart. She was upset, understandably, and that she had gone to such lengths to 'avenge' him was in her favor but she had forgotten her place.

"If you ever strike me again," He began moving toward her until they were inches apart. "I will end you, Witch. Our time apart has not changed the dynamic, nor the difference in our power. I apologize for the deception. I simply..." he faltered then, some of his rage ebbing away. "You would not have understood, you would not have let me do what NEEDED to be done..."

 

[Temp 2]

Standing so close, Siala would have been forced to tilt her head back if she wanted to stare into [member="Salem Norongachi"]'s eyes. But she didn't. The witch knew what she would see there; unrepentant strength of will. For all that he spoke of apologies, he wasn't sorry. Not for what he'd done. For not including? Maybe. But never for pursuing the course of action he'd felt necessary.

Besides, she could feel the power radiating off him. Even with her own senses dulled and muted, the ripples in the force were both familiar and overwhelming. And the anger... oh yes, she could feel the anger. She could have bathed in it, were such her way, though instead she merely curled her fingers into fists at her sides, the nails biting so deep into the skin of her palms that trickles of crimson ichor began to form.

Calm.

She needed to calm down. For all that she wanted to tear our Norongachi's eyes and feed them to him, she needed to calm down, because she knew Omega wasn't speaking a word of a lie when he said he would end her if she struck him again. Would that it were so easy to do, though. Grimacing, she summoned up the image of a Sarlacc - a creature of her savage homeworld - in her mind, and began to feed the anger and the hatred into it, picturing the voracious beast consuming the fiery emotions that sought to consume her and lead her to her doom. It was an old trick, and one she had never quite mastered - even when she was done, the copper-haired Dathomiri could still feel the heat simmering below the surface of her mind, yet it was enough.

"I apologise, Master," she managed to utter, though it felt as though she were dragging each and every word out unwillingly, "I forgot my place."

 

[Salem Norongachi]

"Your place is at my side," Norongachi sighed and then rubbed his cheek, where a red welt had begun to form. The witch certainly hadn't lost any of her fire that was for damn sure. "From now on we do things together or not at all. This Galaxy is...too dangerous for half-truths and secrets and before I'm done I will need powerful allies. You being chief among them." He finished and then took a cigarra from a small case upon his desk, set it between his teeth and lit it with a small application of the Force.

A few steps back brought him to the sill of the window and he rested his rump against it, crossing one leg over the other and gazing curiously at [member="Siala Kai"]. What had happened to her that all his work could be undone? As she was now he didn't imagine even her archiac 'spells' would work. There was only one course of action for it, he'd simply ask. "Why do you feel weak to my senses dear Witch? Its as if you have been stripped of the very strength I hammered into you all those years ago. I am both disturbed and annoyed you could allow this to happen..."

 

[Temp 2]

[member="Salem Norongachi"]'s question, though expected, brought a fresh flush of colour to the witch's features, and her nails bit still deeper into the flesh of her hands as any warmth she felt at Omega's prior proclamation fled before a tide of resurgent anger. "I allowed nothing," she snapped, bitter recrimination sweeping up from the sarlacc's gullet, "But one of the-" She began to say murderers, as she had each team previously, yet hesitated now. Murderers was hardly the right word to use when their victim stood before her, was it? "One of the people who attacked you," she amended, after a long moment of hesitation, "They trapped me in... " For a second time, Siala trailed off, unable to find a word that described the oubliette. Eventually she settled on calling it simply a prison, though the word fell far short of the torture of the Sith machine, adding, "It made me feel every year that passed, yet did no allow me to die."

Every year that passed. And every atrocity that shook the galaxy. The Vong. The Plague. She had felt every force-sundering cataclysm. Every time a world cried out in terror, she cried with them. Every time a billion souls were snuffed out, it felt like a part of herself had been torn away with them.

Lowering her eyes, shamed, Siala spoke once more, voice little more than a hoarse whisper, "I didn't want to hear them, Master. I forced myself to block them out." She admitted weakness, she knew that, but it was the truth; she had tried everything in her power to block out the screams of dying civilisations, but nothing had been good enough. Nothing, except... "I silenced myself." She spoke those words so softly, so reluctantly, that anyone not standing right before her would surely have missed them. And why not? Not only did she admit weakness, but that she had made an error so grievous that it had practically stripped her of its ability to touch the Force? The shame she felt was immense, and she spoke again quickly, almost as though hoping to assuage it as she remarked, "I thought the spell would only last until I could escape, but... the weaves were strange in there. Twisting. Evil. Like they hated me using them."

 

[Salem Norongachi]

Her master only listened, his eyes never leaving her face as if searching for a hint of a falsehood while she relayed her tale. That she had been awake for every moment of the last 700 years and had not broken, had not gone mad from that depth of loneliness, restored some of his faith in the choice he made to train her. She was strong, mentally she might even be stronger than himself.

"What you speak of is the Darkside," He responded. "A nexus of its putrid energy, perhaps. You were never trained to touch upon that and nor should you, not to that extent." He fell silent again, the only noise that of the city outside his window and the occasional muffled shuffle of feet in the corridor outside as someone passed by the door.

What did he say to comfort her? That he might have done the same? That he would have broken before even a single century had passed? No, that confession could never find a voice.

"You survived, Siala Kai, you stand before me alive and whole. What you did was born from the training I gave you; to live no matter the cost. Yes, you had to cut away part of yourself to do so but...that very decision alone, to sacrifice something you held so dear, is proof enough that you are strong, far stronger than any clan sister that has come before you. If you had not, you would have withered and died just as the Galaxy has again and again since our time."

 

[Temp 2]

Omega had ever been sparing in offerings words of praise, and hearing them now Siala lowered her gaze to the plush carpet that lined the office floor. A touch of crimson threatened to colour her cheeks, but she forced it back. She wouldn't embarrass herself. Not in front of him - the mere possibility of that was enough to bring a flash of anger, and the witch embraced the dark emotion willingly, letting it scour away the gratitude and pride she'd felt a moment before.

"Thank you, master," she answered tightly, keeping her gaze focused on a patch of carpet by the desk. It was lighter than most, like someone stood there often. An aide? An advisor? Another apprentice? All seemed likely, and the last all the more so when the witch considered that it hardly seemed her master had put in much effort attempting to work out what had happened to her. But where did that leave her? Would she be abandoned, discarded in this twisted reflection of the galaxy she knew, unable to cast the simplest of spells or even touch the weaves of life?

No, she wouldn't allow that. She couldn't. But how to bring Omega to heel, that was the tricky bit. Like most men, he didn't like to be ordered around, or even led to a sensible decision. He had to be almost persuaded that whatever it was that was wanted had been his idea to begin with.

Which meant...

Mouthing a silent prayer to the ancestor-spirits, Siala glanced up at [member="Salem Norongachi"] through her fringe of coppery-orange hair. He wasn't looking at her; his gaze was distant, stuck somewhere in the past perhaps. It didn't matter. "I... don't think I cut it off," she offered, speaking more softly than she was accustomed, "I can feel it... like echoes in a cave. I think it is simply lost somewhere in that cave."