Private I'm The Mountain

[Aeris Lashiec]

Are we doomed to live in grief and misery? Is it everything we got?​

Her wounds still stung. Each breath was like poking a bruise that had set against the side of her chest. The rest of her body was hardly doing any better. Her movements were slow as she combatted the wear and tear from her encounter in the library. The Sith had gotten away, the temple secured and friends lost along the way. There was no way to truly celebrate survival like this. All they could do was move forward, and so that was what Aeris elected to do.

As Aeris limped and grunted her way through the camps set up to help recover she had only one goal: find Saan’an. The poor boy had been at the center of a maelstrom far beyond his station and a deception handed to him not by his enemy but his friends, his own master; Aeris.

She needed to see him, she needed to see that he was alive.

And there he was. She stopped for a moment, her lips cracking with an attempted smile that ended up looking more like that of a deer caught in a pair of headlights. She wanted to speak but for once the sounds just didn’t take shape. The otherwise all too chat-happy book clerk was by all accounts at a loss of words.

Aeris approached the young man.

“Saan’an.” She said and knelt down by his side despite the pain. “I am so sorry.”

Saan'an Gaelor

 

[Saan'an Gaelor]

“Saan’an.”​

Hearing his name snapped Saan'an out of his stupor with a sharp flinch. Vacuous indifference reigned for a brief, yet somehow uncomfortably lengthy moment before recognition came. Return to reality sparked in his eyes like a droid powering on. Shock still reverberated through every bone, rang in his ears, made him feel like he was standing on another planet entirely.

“I am so sorry.”​

"You knew, didn't you?" he asked, already benumbed for the answer he expected. It might as well have been a rhetorical question, as he already had a notion that she did. Specifically, a notion that the Council must have known for a while. Jedi from all over were present for the confrontation, making it clear just how much time they'd had to plan for such a thing. He could have spent time lamenting and questioning why no one bothered to tell him, why they'd let him sit blind in the Lion's Den, but it hardly mattered anymore.

Neither questions nor answers would change anything, and he didn't have the energy to be worked up over the betrayal he felt. "Have you seen Jem?" he inquired aimlessly, practically discarding the previous subject.

 

[Aeris Lashiec]

There was nothing but selfishness behind the tears that stung beneath Aeris’ eyes. The grief wasn’t so much Saan’an’s as it was her own. She always prided herself on her openness, and yet when it was needed of her the most she had failed and someone that had been put under her direct protection suffered for it.

“I wanted to tell you. I wished for the time to tell you, but the timing never showed.” Aeris frowned. “Jem is safe, I think. She was with Dagon during the attack. There is no-one I would trust more to keep her alive than that man.”

Her eyes closed as the tears continued. A snivel here, a sob there. She was a mess.

“Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”

… Any worse than we already hurt you?

Saan'an Gaelor

 

[Saan'an Gaelor]

"I'm okay," he assured. Somehow, he'd walked away from that encounter unscathed. Others weren't so lucky. Morteg died in his place, and several others held wounds on what felt like it might as well have been his behalf. Answering the question, once again confirming to himself and others that he wasn't hurt, only made his guilt intensify. Every part of him that wasn't in pain was a present reminder of his cowardice.

"This is my fault," Saan'an asserted. "I helped him, thought I was helping us. Now people are dead because I couldn't see thought it- I- I should have known better." His voice cracked, tears welled under his eyes. A half-step away from hysterics and the stairs were deteriorating.

"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!"

 

[Aeris Lashiec]

“Hey, no, stop.” Aeris said and quickly shuffled to sit next to Saan’an and wrap an arm around his shoulder. “People died, but you cannot put the responsibility for their demise solely on your own shoulders. We in the Circle were blindsided by this as well, and we are supposed to be the best the New Jedi Order has to offer, and yet it was dropped on us when it was already too late. By the time I even had the time to tell you, the bombs were already dropping.”

“And besides that, what would you have done if you did know? We are not law enforcers. Murdering another senator in what would appear to be cold blood would serve no-one but the Sith, Saan’an.”

“You did well. You did really well, and you made it back. I am proud of you for that. Those who died may yet find peace in the force, their body may have perished, but their spirit will last forever. You did nothing wrong.”

Saan'an Gaelor

 

[Jem Fossk]

Jem's impending fight with Dagon dispersed at his reveal. She could only stand there, numb and silver and at a loss.

Fossk is Darth Solipsis .

do you want to go to the Senate now?"

Her horror shattered. Motion returned to her limbs with an explosion of force, the girl turning on a dime and running. She ran past it all-- the bodies the rubble, and saw none of it. Her whole mind was focused on finding her brother. She would upturn every rock, visit every office until she knew-- Dagon no longer mattered. The temple meant nothing.


She didn't have to go far. In the courtyards beyond the shattered entrance was a second group of recoveries. Jem tore through it, causing a fuss that would have earned her a talking to just a day ago. No one bothered to correct the spastic padawan. Not for events like this.

She would be heard before she could be seen.

She collided into him, their dense composition creating an audible thunk as she hit him like a bullet. Or a bolder. She had never held him so tightly before. She had also never cried, but she did so in that moment. Like a blubbering baby.

He wasn't dead.

Her relief was poignant. "You fethin i-idiot."