Private Confessions of An Alcoholic

[Inanna Harth]

“Do you honestly believe Adrian will let your family live?”

“He had better!” Inanna roared. “Or I’ll make him sorry he was ever born!”

But she was the one filled with regret. She despised them all—Vanessa, Adrian, her family, but most of all herself. Hated the universe, too, for chewing her up and spitting her out.

Then the lightning struck, and Inanna could hardly hear Vanessa’s voice over the screaming of her nerves as agony filled her.

“I’m disappointed in you, Inanna. Why would you believe the Sith were going to let Jedi live? Once we’re done here, I will give the order: they are to be killed by my assassins.”

Not if I kill you first, Inanna thought, but her fury was ebbing away. She was in too much pain to think clearly. So much pain…

“It’s what they deserve, and you should know it after all. They did abandon you and disown you.”

What they deserved? Her mother and brothers hadn’t disowned her. But they had all stood by while her father did. No one had tried to comfort or reassure her, make her feel like she was still wanted…

“Let your carnality and lust for drink run free. Let them consume you, so you may forget how little you mean to them, and how unwilling they were to accept your life choices.”

My life… my life, when it is written, will read better than it lived…

At some point, she had fallen over on the floor, writhing uncontrollably as the current ran viciously through her flesh. She was in shock. How had she come to be here? What had happened to her? What had led her down this distorted path?

She remembered the night Nimdok had found her at the Harem Club. In moments he had peeled away decades of alternate lives, the identities of strangers built up like walls around her. He had found her buried underneath the layers of lies, and…

And even he had turned away from her in disgust, as if she were an unclean thing.

All of this had been for him. Going among the Sith. Walking among them. Working with them. Pretending to be one of them. Hoping she could win back his love if she got justice on his behalf. If she took revenge on the one who had wronged him by hurting his daughter.

“Messala,” she rasped. “...Messala!”

The figure of Vanessa was suddenly obscured by a vision of the Sith Lord she longed to defeat. No longer did she merely want him to face justice. No, she wanted him to suffer a thousand torments, to wish that he was dead and more. She wanted him to feel as she felt now, a million times over.

Force energies, raw and tangled and untamed, arced from her body as she fired back against Vanessa’s attack. The Darkwhip hummed menacingly in her grasp, though she was using only her hands to direct the power. She aimed the mass of twisted force at her master, hoping in her heart that she would die. She hoped they would both die here.

Onrai

 

[Onrai]

“You won’t.” She replied to Inanna’s outburst. “You don’t have the power. And you never will, unless you let the darkness fill you and consume you.” She smiled. “You will not kill me. I will torture you. You will suffer every sort of defilement and punishment I can bring to bear upon you. Every last scrap of purity within that body of yours will be ruined and debauched until nothing remains.” She thought back to what she had done to Bryn Celli Ddu those years ago. Though it had not been Vanessa’s desire to do such to Inanna, words did have power, and she was expertly slicing into the Shi’ido with her barbed tongue.

“Your parents believe you have not a scrap of value in their eyes. Not your mother, not your father, not your siblings. They don’t even believe you have volume when you are beneath a man or woman giving them pleasure for money. You are nothing to them.”

The buildup of Dark Side energy was so raw, so primal that Vanessa was taken aback and did in fact stagger back, the sword and her free hand catching the power in question. The blade gleamed with darkness as it further absorbed the raw power Inanna was exuding. When she finally could release no more, Vanessa closed her eyes and focused - now was the time to do what must be done.

Out of Vanessa’s spare hand was channeled Lightning of an intensity she had rarely exuded - black lightning. As it struck towards Inanna, tendrils of raw dark side energy manifested from the floor beneath her, seeking to wrap themselves around her and cover her entire body, rotting away at her attire with their corrosive blight and preventing her from being able to move. Simultaneously she would feel a gargantuan pressure flow into her mind, like an allegorical spear as Vanessa attempted to truly destroy whatever mental defenses it was that Inanna still had, seeking to have access to anything and everything within her apprentice’s mind.

This was it. This was potentially what would excise the last elements of goodness and nobility from Inanna’s heart. She would have to see how successful she was once this was over.

Inanna Harth

 

[Inanna Harth]

“You will not kill me. I will torture you. You will suffer every sort of defilement and punishment I can bring to bear upon you. Every last scrap of purity within that body of yours will be ruined and debauched until nothing remains.”

Inanna screamed aloud, her voice lost in the thunder of black lightning. She wore no true clothing, save a few bits of jewelry and metal buttons which merely acted as conductors. The items she had stowed away in her body burned like hot irons against her flesh—her compact mirror, her crystals and gems, a pocket full of credits, ID cards, a datapad that was by now certainly broken.

She rolled over on her hands and knees, trying to crawl away, only to find that she couldn’t move. Her mouth opened to call out to Ayreon, waiting for her on the other side of the door, but she stopped herself. It would be a foolish and useless thing to do—Ayreon, with his droid parts and circuitry, would be fried the instant he set foot in this room. No, he couldn’t help her.

No one could.

Helpless again, she closed her eyes, cold hatred turning her heart to stone. She just wanted it to stop. What would it take to get Vanessa to stop? Complete and total surrender? Yielding to the power of the Dark Side? Did she even have a choice?

Yes, a still small voice whispered. Don’t let her take it away from you.

Inanna was beginning to lose consciousness. Through her isolation she thought she saw faces above and around her, familiar and strangers, before the digitized training area was replaced by a room with a view of an artificial garden aboard a station floating through space, silent and cold.

She had stayed there with Miri, Nimdok’s daughter, while he was away on an expedition. Miri was six years old, with a riot of dark curls, two big eyes and two big knees sticking out from underneath her blue dress. She sat on the floor of the living room, staring at her toys without touching them.

Some part of her knew Vanessa had dredged up this memory, but she had no more strength left to fight her master. She could only watch it replay.

Leaving behind dinner cooking on the stove, she approached Miri slowly and crouched down beside her. “You okay, sweetheart?”

The girl didn’t answer, nor did she react to Inanna tucking a lock of her hair behind her delicately pointed ear. Inanna brushed the back of her hand against the child’s forehead. It was cool. She wasn’t sick, though she was very pale and withdrawn.

“Why did the lady and the man take me away?” Miri suddenly asked.

She was referring to the two Sith lackeys who had abducted her from the orphanage. They had abused her and experimented on her. A child, six years old. Such cruelty was beyond Inanna’s comprehension. “Because they were angry with your father,” she replied.

“Did he do something bad?”

“No. He… well, he…” She struggled to answer the question in a way Miri would understand. “...in a way, he did do something bad. He stole something. But he did it with good intentions in mind—they were going to use it to do bad things, and he took it in order to stop them.”

As Vanessa dug into her, Inanna’s mind flooded with memories of Nimdok. Ari, as she had called him before he took on a dead man’s identity and spirit. The scientist, the archaeologist, and now the father of this little girl who had been through so much.

Miri looked pensive. Her eyes were so expressive, just like Nimdok’s. “...Am I bad now?” she asked.

Inanna’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“They did stuff to me,” Miri explained, rubbing her tiny nose with a small hand. “They changed me. When they put me in the glass box, and put the tubes and wires all over me… and when the lady would hit me, and I hit her back without touching her…”

“No, Miri,” Inanna interrupted softly, pulling the child to her and holding her close. “No, they didn’t make you into a bad person. You don’t have to be like them.”

In the present, Inanna lay still, waiting for it all to be over with. She would die… yes. That would be all right. She wouldn’t trouble anyone anymore.

But the lightning never came close to truly ending her life. Her body would not die, though her spirit had been broken and her mind torn to shreds.

Onrai

 

[Onrai]

Vanessa continued to listen to her thoughts, as the crippled Shi’ido would find herself slowly let down by the tendrils, the electricity stopping as Vanessa ceased to continue. The Darkwhip rolled away from her apprentice as she listened to the memories replaying in Inanna’s head, to the soft sound of her subconscious telling her that she did in fact have a choice in whether to give in to the darkness or not.

The choice has already been made by you. You have already taken it away. In contrast to the quiet voice of her inner conscience, Vanessa’s invading presence responded more loudly, more authoritatively, seeking to destroy whatever faith Inanna might have had in what she once was and whether she could be that person again.

Outside her mind, Vanessa watched as her apprentice’s body lost control of itself, slowly beginning to return to its natural form and expelling the various conductive instruments hidden within her amalgamous form. Vanessa kicked them away from her and brought the Darkwhip to her hand, burying the weapon within her robes once more. she would lean down and whisper her honied words into Inanna’s indiscernible ears.

“You have been broken.” She said. “It was not something I wanted to do, but the purity in your heart left me no choice.” She frowned. “But now comes the rebuilding process, Inanna. Where you will free yourself from the chains of your vices - or they will consume you.”

With that, Vanessa used the Force to mercifully attempt to put the dazed woman to sleep as medical droids would enter the training room, taking her out and preparing to assist her.

-

When next Inanna would awaken, she would find herself in what appeared to be a bacta tank, though a strange combination of pleasure and a potent stinging sensation would fill her body. The tank she was within was not entirely full, her unscathed and unwounded head above the liquid the rest of her floated in. The liquid was semitransparent, a dark red coloration, and comprised three core ingredients: pricy and highly alcoholic wine, liquid aphrodisiac, and an amount of Sith poison as well.

“This is your second trial, Inanna.” She would hear Vanessa’s voice and see her outside of the tank she was in. “Within this tank lies the sum total of your vices. The tank is lined with nullification resin, so don’t think you will be able to escape with the Force. Now your options are plain - surrender to them, or continue to resist.”

Inanna Harth

 

[Inanna Harth]

Upon awakening in the tank and seeing Vanessa outside, Inanna felt a spike of rage like a serpent’s fangs through her heel. She pressed her hands against the sides of the tank, pausing as she saw the sharp change in their shape and coloration. Her body must have reverted back to her natural form, a gargoylish creature with a round, flat face and skin like wet clay, hardly discernible as female to the human eye.

As Vanessa spoke, Inanna banged against the walls of the tank, beating them with her fists, but it was no use. The absence of the Force was like a chill that seeped down into her bones. She was alone with her thoughts as she had never been before.

So she defied the helplessness imposed upon her by her master in what little way she could. She changed form. The liquid surrounding her splashed as her flesh shifted and twisted; she had no choice but to brace her limbs against the sides of the tank to keep her head from going under.

When she had finished the metamorphosis, she looked human again, snow white and with her silver haired pinned up. She wore a black jumpsuit, the fake “cloth” seemingly unaffected by the liquid. It was a plain outfit that covered her body completely, save her head and slender hands, which she held above the wine-colored water.

The empty space above the liquid wasn’t big enough for her to hold her body there. Besides, if she tried, Vanessa would probably just fill the tank completely. Inanna would survive it, even if she had to grow gills. But she hated the thought of being completely submerged by this… vileness.

The sheer potency of the wine produced acrid fumes that burned her nose and made her eyes water. But worse were the aphrodisiacs, which seemed to lick and caress her skin, trying to incite feelings of lust. Was that her other vice? For her, being a prostitute was rarely about her own pleasure. Of course, she must have wanted it, or she wouldn’t have done it for so many years. But strangers fumbling in the dark couldn’t give her what she truly sought.

Pushing her arms forward, she pressed her palms against the transparisteel, her head hanging low between her hunched shoulders. She willed herself not to weep, or scream, shout or moan. She wouldn’t give Vanessa the satisfaction of seeing her lose control.

The nullification resin must work both ways. Vanessa couldn’t read her mind anymore. Her thoughts were her own in this moment.

And what a mess they were.

It was strange, to feel a compulsion to bow your head and drink deep of poison. Saltwater streamed down her cheeks and beaded on the tip of her nose, leaking from her inflamed eyes due to the alcohol content, but it also made her body sharply aware of the fact that she was suffering from withdrawal. What was it Vanessa had said? That she had “known the cruel touch of addiction”? Oh, she knew it, all right. And she knew exactly how to make it into one of the most miserable experiences of Inanna’s life.

In her efforts to avoid breathing in the dizzying fumes, Inanna’s breaths shortened. She was panting from the strain, her chest moving up and down rapidly. The surface of the liquid rose and fell against her flesh, the aphrodisiacs continuing to tease her unbearably. Given no choice but to be placed on this lecherous track of thinking, she wanted her thoughts to be of Ari. She should have thought of Ari, since he was the nearest thing she had to an experience of genuine love.

Instead, she thought of Adrian, with his cold skin and his blue eyes framed by long dark lashes. She thought of the slope of his chest through his clothes, the softness of his unworked hands, his arms around her when she had sat in his lap. Like Xizor with Leia, his resistance to her charms had only made him all the more appealing. Her addled mind carried her away, envisioning things that had never happened, trying to rewrite history.

But it couldn’t be that way. She would never be happy with him, or with any man who kept a harem of women. It didn’t matter that his mistresses and concubines hardly cared what he did. Inanna would care. Inanna couldn’t bear it…

This would all be over soon, wouldn’t it? The minutes passed like hours, the hours like days. She wasn’t sure if she could hold out much longer before she let herself be consumed.

Onrai

 

[Onrai]

Vanessa continued to watch patiently as Inanna first strained, then reshaped herself into her ideal image before observing as she struggled to withstand the combination of pleasurable sensations with the alcoholic fumes of intoxication that bubbled from within the vile brew she had practically attempted to pickle the Shi'ido within. She watched as Inanna strained struggling to keep herself under control. Vanessa chose to attempt to further pressure her apprentice, smiling as she leaned in. She could not experience the terror and chaos within Inanna's mind, truthfully, but could still imagine what feelings she was experiencing.

"Go ahead." She said, smiling. "Go ahead and drown your sorrows in that swill. It won't kill you." He lips were practically pressed against the tank.

I promise.

Inanna Harth

 

[Inanna Harth]

Vanessa drew closer to the barrier between them, nearly pressing her lips against the glass as she spoke. Inanna found herself wondering what she wanted from her. She was taunting her student, trying to get her to submit, to give in. But wasn’t submission a sign of weakness, the antithesis of what it meant to be Sith?

It was possible, though Inanna was loath to admit that she could’ve gotten herself into such an arrangement, that all of this was a ruse. Vanessa didn’t want an apprentice so much as she wanted a broken servant. Or a slave. Someone who would follow her, serve her, be her companion and perhaps even a friend, but hardly her equal.

But no… there was another possibility, a clue in something she had said only hours before. Vanessa had revealed that she was once a slave, in the earliest years of her life. That she had killed her owner and escaped, and that was how her trip down the path of the Dark Side started. She must be inflicting what she went through on me, only all at once, Inanna thought. She’s reenacting her own upbringing… trying to recreate her fall...

A stirring of empathy, safely hidden from Vanessa by the nullification resin, helped to keep Inanna afloat for a little while longer. But it wasn’t enough.

Inanna’s muscles ached from holding herself upright. Her wounds, unhealed after the brutal “breaking” she had received, stung bitterly. Her vision was blurry, her sinuses and eyes burned, and her withdrawal was like a desperate itch in need of scratching. She relaxed her hold, her palms squeaking as she slipped down the sides of the tank, until something came loose and she fell, barely keeping her head above the inky swill. The liquid splattered against her lips, and she couldn’t resist licking it. The taste spread over her tongue and flooded her mouth before she realized that she had taken a gulp of the stuff.

From there she couldn’t stop. She drank as if she were dying of thirst, swallowing again and again, all while a voice in the back of her mind wondered am I really this weak-willed? What am I doing trying to become a powerful Force User? A Sith, no less? How will I be able to get anything done? How will I ever defeat Arrius Messala, or help Nimdok and Miri, or ever be worth anything to anyone? I couldn’t even be a decent coworker, the way I am now. Let alone a good and worthy friend...

Ayreon. Where was Ayreon, she wondered? Probably still waiting for her to return. He must not have known what was happening here. He couldn’t have known, or he would’ve attacked to save her. And he would have been swiftly dispatched.

She hoped that he was safe, wherever he was. As soon as this was all over, she and him would blow outta here in her hot little courier. They would go somewhere nice and peaceful, and Inanna would finally have a chance to write a book. Someplace with a clear blue ocean and clean white beaches, warm sun and cool breezes and stars at night and… and she would learn how to love him. He was capable of it, she knew he was. There was a whole section on reproduction in his manual—

Inanna’s stomach turned. She was making herself sick, drinking and thinking like this. It had to be the aphrodisiacs, making her fantasize about things that she would normally never do. Take an HRD as her lover? Not even in her wildest dreams.

Not Hal Yomin either, though she had been tempted that night at the Red Lady. He already looked dashing in that blue suit, but when he started drinking, it caused him to sweat out his anti-pheromone ointment. She realized then just how much he needed it—she could smell his pheromones like body spray on a hormonal teenage boy. Yes, she had been sorely tempted… right up until he started crying and blubbering, because he was drunk. And then he threw up in a public fountain outside the restaurant, also because he was drunk. Poor Hal. He must still be sitting in her old office on Dromund Kaas, twiddling his pink thumbs, waiting for word from her. Her last payment from her job at Euphoria would’ve long since come through, wired directly to his bank account. He was probably wondering where she was, what she was doing. If something had happened to her. Or maybe not. If she died, he’d still have her money.

The water level had gone down enough from her drinking that Inanna’s feet could touch the bottom of the tank. She was going to puke soon, very soon. For now, though, she couldn’t seem to get enough of this poison.

Onrai

 

[Onrai]

Vanessa watched as Inanna finally did as she expected she would: succumbed to her desired. She guzzled the vile cocktail as though her life depended on it. Inside, Vanessa was not proud that these measures had been taken, but she saw no other choice: one had to reach the bottom of the abyss before they could ascend, and Inanna was no different. In a way, Vanessa wished to process her through the trials she herself had experienced, knowing that if they had helped her, it would be possible to help the Shi'ido reach her full potential as a darksider too.

She continued to watch as more and more of the liquid made its way into Inanna's mouth, the woman having consumed enough of the tainted alcohol to poison the blood of ten men. Her addiction's consumption of her appeared to have been the only thing keeping her going, even as she inevitably found herself unable to contain the copious quantities of swill that ran through her system and vomited it forth. That reaction was enough for Vanessa, and as she watched her apprentice do what she was sure she had done numerous times upon overindulging in drink, she silently hoped the Dark Side would touch Inanna through her poison-tainted blood and help her realize that she could not continue to live like this, that her consumption of alcohol had to stop if she was to live the life of a Sith so long as it had control over her.

When the vomiting had ceased, Vanessa ordered the tank to drain and open up. A horribly vile and acidic smell came from it as the scent of puke and bile pervaded the area, Vanessa soon leaning forward and grasping the limp and weakened Inanna before taking her away. "There was only one way to get you to realize what kind of damnation you are setting upon yourself with addiction to drink. You've consumed enough alcohol to kill ten men. Sleep now, and pray to the Dark Side that you survive the poison running through your veins. If you do, we will see each other again." Once more, Vanessa put her apprentice to sleep, her last sight prior to next awakening being that of Vanessa giving her a hug.

-

Inanna's next moment of awakening would be to find herself in a bed, snuggled up with a comfy blanket on a comfy mattress. An indeterminate period of time had passed. Were she to look for the wounds that had been inflicted upon her, she would find naught a scar - Vanessa had taken the time to, over nearly an hour, channel her own Dark Side energy into her apprentice, healing her body and closing the wounds that had remained open. She would find a platter of cheese cubes and cold cuts at her bedside, along with a tall glass of water and her datapad, still heavily scorched but returned to working order. On it was a note from Vanessa.

Inanna,

Once your body has finally overcome the cruelty of your addiction, eat this snack I have prepared for you, then meet me on Deck 73. There is but one more thing we must do before your very last test.

Your master,
Vanessa Vantai

Inanna Harth

 

[Inanna Harth]

Inanna awoke lying in a strange bed in an unfamiliar room. At least she was comfortable—and her wounds seemed to have healed without scarring. But despite the care she had received, she still had a slight headache.

Stumbling out of bed, she saw the items on the table. She read the note while she ate. Her mind was slow to remember, slow to recover full awareness, but when she did finally process all that had happened and what the message was saying, her thoughts quickened. From her datapad she saw that around ten hours had passed since she fell unconscious. The scorch marks were an unpleasant reminder of what had occurred in the training room, but they also raised another question: where was the rest of her stuff?

And more importantly, where was Ayreon?

With a renewed urgency, she downed the water, grabbed her datapad, then left the bedroom. Deck 73 wasn’t far from where she was, but Inanna was far more concerned with recovering her lost property, her HRD included. Getting into an elevator, she used the datapad to track his location… and realized that he was still standing outside the training room. Well, at least he couldn’t get tired.

She could send him remote messages with her datapad, including orders, though he had the option to disobey if he thought they seemed dubious. Her message read I’m okay. Please retrieve any items I may have left behind in the training room, including my compact mirror and rock collection. If you can’t find anything there, tell me.

It might seem silly, but her compact mirror was no ordinary compact mirror, nor was her rock collection an ordinary rock collection. The mirror was a custom-made device that she used to hide things in; it also had healing properties due to the regeneration gems embedded in its lid. Her rocks included precious gems worth tons of money and magic crystals that could potentially be used as lightsaber focusing crystals. Needless to say, these were not items she was willing to part with so easily.

As the doors to the lift opened on Deck 73, Inanna stuffed her datapad into her back and stepped out, looking around. Without the nullification resin, there was nothing keeping her thoughts hidden from Vanessa—so she tried not to think at all, nor did she say anything when she finally spotted her master.

Onrai

 

[Onrai]

Upon opening the door, she would find the latest the rest of her belongings were already sitting in a locker over on the near side of the room, along with a white bathrobe. She had entered what could best be described as a spa among spas, with everything from saunas and relaxing pools to massage tables and all sorts of other tremendous amenities. Vanessa stood there dreesed in a robe different from her last: it was still black, but was made of a much thinner material.

“Good, you passed the second trial.” she said softly and soothingly, smiling at her apprentice. “Yesterday was a long and strenuous day. I had to strain you past your absolute limits. The Dark Side healed you after you fell unconscious from vomiting your guts out, and hopefully the trauma was the last time you will attempt to indulge in such a vice.” She motioned for Inanna to come with her as she walked to a nearby massage table, perfectly laid out with a comfortable fabric. “Please strip down and get underneath the sheet face down. I’ll be right back.”

With that, she quickly went to the far side of the spa, gathering whatever it was she was going to need in order to accomplish her goals. Her mind was still open, however, eagerly awaiting Inanna’s next thoughts.”

Inanna Harth

 

[Inanna Harth]

Inanna pursed her lips at the sight of her belongings in the locker. So she had overreacted to their being missing. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time it had happened. While Vanessa had her back turned, she quickly took out her datapad again and sent a follow-up message to Ayreon. Nevermind, I found my stuff. You’re welcome to go where you please for now. Tell me if you find anything interesting.

She was careful to censor the wording of her messages, although if there was anyone monitoring her communications, it was obvious that she had more or less asked the HRD to explore and report back to her. He wouldn’t go into any restricted areas, but he would seek to gather more information about the place.

Setting her datapad on a nearby table with the screen facing down, Inanna glanced back at Vanessa, absently reaching up to unbutton her jumpsuit before remembering that there was no reason not to just shift her clothing away. Her hands dropped to her sides as she re-absorbed the body mass serving as false cloth, then quickly got underneath the blanket. Her silence was quite noticeable, both in terms of not talking and keeping her surface level thoughts clear. She almost seemed to be operating on autopilot.

Onrai

 

[Onrai]

Vanessa returned with a polished ceramic basin carried in both hands and placed on a nearby table. Within the basin was a mixture of pleasant-smelling oils refined from herbs and mints, mixed with a more general oil that comprised the base of the massage oil Vanessa was using. Gently dipping her hands in it before letting the excess run off, she began to work on kneading and firmly massaging the presumably aching back muscles of the Shi’ido she called her apprentice.

“I’m sorry.“ she said softly. “I just didn’t see any other means of helping you free yourself from your addiction.” Her thumbs moved to the back of Inanna’s neck, slow circular movements slowly wearing away at any knots of bound muscular tissue. “This is my way of making up for it. I became very skilled at this early in my old life, before I became a Sith.” She said, continuing to work on the neck, shoulders, and upper back.

“Will you forgive me?” She asked her apprentice.

Inanna Harth

 

[Inanna Harth]

Inanna lay still as Vanessa rubbed the scented oils into her back. Another small window into her master’s past was offered. “This is my way of making up for it. I became very skilled at this early in my old life, before I became a Sith. Will you forgive me?”

Forgiveness. Wasn’t that a Jedi thing?

Inanna hesitated before replying, “It’s still too early to tell whether your methods have worked. If I don’t drink again, then the victory is yours. I’ll forgive you then.”

If it failed to cure her addiction, she didn’t say what she was thinking. But it would be one more painful failure she’d had to endure, just like her first attempt at becoming a Jedi.

“For now, I’ll just… accept what happened. I won’t think about it or hold a grudge. Is that enough?”

Onrai

 

[Onrai]

She nodded. "I can agree to that." Vanessa sighed as she continued to work aggressively on sore muscles in Inanna's shoulders. "It's going to take willpower on your part as well." She said. "Fortunately the Sith poison within the cocktail should assist you in rejecting such." She replied, continuing to firmly tenderize the Shi'ido's musculature. Once she was certain that Inanna's neck and shoulders were good, she began to move on to her middle back. "The third trial is going to be quite difficult." She said. "I'm going to have you fight a Dark Trooper in the training room." She said. "Once that is done, we will get into the intimacies of the Force, for I will know you can fight."

She grew more intense in her pressure, really working to plumb the depths of Inanna's flesh for areas of malformed tissue to work out.

Inanna Harth

 

[Inanna Harth]

“What exactly is Sith poison?” Inanna asked. “I mean, what is it made of? What does it do?” More than that, how could poison fight poison?

As for the Third Trial, Inanna had some idea of what that would entail. Her mind burned with images from holofilms depicting the historical exploits of the warlike Sith. Scenes of duels ending without mercy, even if the defeated combatant surrendered. If it came to that…

No. She wouldn’t let it come to that. If the Dark Trooper kept fighting, she would act in self-defense. If they surrendered, she wouldn’t be the one who struck them down.

Onrai

 

[Onrai]

“Sith poison is made of various alchemical cocktails infused with raw Dark Side energy.” Vanessa replied as she worked on Inanna’s back. “In its base form it helps to stimulate your emotions. Fear. Anger. Passion. It makes it harder for you to resist the power of the Dark Side. Sometimes it can even lead to you doing what you did in the training room and just straight up losing control. The light will be quenched in time, though you do not necessarily need to be a bad person as a Darksider.” She said.

She sighed. “This specific Sith poison is a little different. It’s made of cocktails infused with some of my own pure Dark Side energy.” She sighed. “Because it was mixed with the wine, it rapidly multiplies the effects of the components it was bound to, a fail safe of sorts to help keep you in line so to speak. Even a drop of wine will make you start feeling as though you were in that tank, guzzling away enough swill to kill a squad with liver-rot alone. Alcohol is no longer something you will be able to consume without tremendous side effects.” She said, finding a knot of muscle and working more aggressively with her thumb to break it up.

Inanna Harth

 

[Inanna Harth]

So she was no longer an alcoholic, but alcohol-intolerant. At least, if Vanessa's treatment worked.

"What about the aphrodisiacs? Will the Sith poison make me intolerant of that, too?" She didn't think the effects could be serious enough to completely destroy her sex drive - perhaps she simply wouldn't be able to tolerate liquid aphrodisiacs. She'd never used those anyway.

Still lying flat on her stomach, Inanna reached out with the Force and floated her compact mirror from the locker into her hands. She opened it, looking at her reflection. Her face looked no different after all that she had endured yesterday. There were no scars, no signs of sickness or weakness. Her eyes were a different story - her gaze seemed older, weary, and sad. But she had probably already begun to look that way well before she ever met Vanessa. Closing the compact, she clutched it in her palm, fingers rubbing the restoration gems embedded in the lid, feeling the gentle thrum of their healing power and her master's massaging of her knotted muscles.

Onrai

 

[Onrai]

"If you react to even a drop of alcohol as though you were vomitously drunk..." She said, considering what this would mean for the aphrodisiacs. "Quite frankly the overreaction could be... excessive." She replied. "We're talking 'drive comparable to the planet of Zeltros' excessive." Vanessa aggressively worked on the knot, kneading it and even bringing a blunted and oiled warm stone to her hand that assisted her in tenderizing the muscles. Once done, she placed it to the side and continued to work on Inanna's back. "These can't all be from yesterday... You haven't had work done in a while." She said. "Have you ever learned how to do this?" Such was a serious inquiry - if Inanna had been a courtesan prior to her time as an apprentice, perhaps she had learned some massage techniques in question.

At the very least, this was a surprisingly relaxing moment to Vanessa.

Inanna Harth

 

[Inanna Harth]

“I don’t think I’ve ever had anything like this done to me,” she replied with a small smile. The only comparable situation she could recall was a few trips to a chiropractor due to chronic back pain. But she’d never gotten a massage from someone else.

“I did learn the basics, many years ago, but it wasn’t something I did very often with clients,” she admitted. “If they specifically requested it, I would do it. But usually there was no time.”

At every place she had worked, there had always been a time limit. Thirty minutes to an hour, usually. Some days she would constantly watch the clock, counting the minutes until it was over… What was it the whore had said to the emperor’s lascivious wife in that play? “The difference between this great lady and myself is that my work is her hobby.” Inanna’s hobbies had included reading, writing, gardening, and falling for unattainable men who could no more confess their love for her than they could admit they loved their own mothers. She had loved a man like that once. It was a silly infatuation, and an unrequited one at that. He never touched her, and she had loved him all the more for it.

And now he was probably an old man, or dead. For her it still felt like yesterday, but for him half a lifetime had already passed.

Onrai

 

[Onrai]

Vanessa smiled. "I hope you're enjoying it." Doing something for her apprentices was very rare - she had made the Darktrooper suit for Tekkio , and had given one of her fuzzy blankets to Kalanda Tishire, but this was the first time she had done something for an apprentice that was more than simply the giving of an object. "If you'd like, I'd be glad to teach you more suitable techniques. Some you may even be able to use on yourself." She sighed for a moment before finally moving to her apprentice's lower back, having worked out the knots in the middle back.

"Relaxation is going to be paramount. Dark Troopers are soulless killing machines, forged of phrik and shielded with potent energy shields. They have slaughtered countless Jedi and their followers, as well as rebels and other ilk. Fighting this one is not going to be an easy task."

Inanna Harth