Private Mirror Mirror

[Jem Fossk]

//Prosperity
//Watching Paint Dry after x
// Ishida Ashina

Jem was on edge. She knew that the order was a friend, not her enemy, but she had a hard time staying this long under its protection. The sacking of the temple had changed everything for her and Dagon. Without the in-depth investigations they wanted they could only assume that her father's reach was everywhere. Jem in particular was convinced that he wouldn't have left his seat of power without leaving behind an equally intricate measure of spies that he could manipulate from afar.

It was safest to assume that the only people they could trust were themselves. They had been operating that way since, living in safe houses and only emerging in short bursts that would trace back to nothing if someone was looking for them. Which her father was. Dagon's paranoia had been working for them. They had evaded the Maw's reach for months, that was...

Until Dagon got caught.


They had tortured him for the better part of two weeks before she busted him out under the distraction of Adrathorpe . She had no way of knowing what he had told them, and he looked so unwell when she found him, Jem had had no choice but to retreat to Prosperity for help. That was what she told the aid that processed them in, and that was what she told anyone that came to follow up after.

Master Dagon and I have been working undercover. He was caught. I pulled him out. Help him.


Recovery was lot like watching paint dry, but at least she had access to fresh clothing again, of which she had helped herself to... and then some. Along with the Order's private archives, several files of which she downloaded on the spot before leaving.

The resource she had missed most of all came in the form of empty mats and headsets. In the safehouses Jem would have once traded a kidney for a training room like this. Now she could barely get herself to concentrate enough to utilize it. Advanced simulations descended on her with impressive speed, but she could only fend off the attacks for half a minute or more before her thoughts wandered and a lethal hit ended it all on the spot.

She let out a frustrated sigh and lowered the training saber; a simpler level would distract her even less. This wasn't working. She yanked the headset off.

 

[Ishida Ashina]

The destruction of Coruscant had rattled the Jedi to their core. Over the course of weeks and months, things that hadn’t been clear slowly started to construct patterns worth being curious about. Intersections here and there in behaviours and interactions, wherein coincidences couldn’t be ignored.

But for some reason, the Jedi didn’t seem to be investigating one another. They had differences, sure, Tython was evidence of that, but the strength of the individuals within The Order was far from being put to trial or consideration. Was a blind eye the same as banding together in unity?

This frustration was a small detail on the mind of the Ashina heir. Just a thread on tumult’s tapestry — just another noise that would be deafened by activity.

Prosperity’s training rooms, and Eleven Starboard, were perhaps the only two things that brought her back again and again to the mobile station. Although each time she walked through the hallways, she felt more like they would be her last times.

With a sigh, she stepped into the brilliant white training room. All white and carved out with a gentle slope that merged into the walls, the circular room was designed to allow combatants mobility and focus; without additional obstacles to trip them outside of the headgear. The brilliant lighting also allowed new entrants, like herself, to quickly scope the room’s occupants.

Right now, it was just one. And Ishida entered just as the training program started, and had barely made it to her own station when it ended. She was about to pluck her own helmet from the row of available ones when she turned it over in her hands instead. The dark-haired girl removed her own, looking irritated. Looking like Dagon Kaze’s Padawan. Dagon Kaze’s Padawan with a nefarious bloodline. Jem Fossk . One of two dark seeds.

<Solipsis was distracted by someone he called "daughter". He left me alive because he was in such a rush to reach her.>

Another one of the galaxy’s post-Coruscant coincidences. Ishida had meant to come here to train. Not to hunt.

“The dent in the left side of the helmet throws the projections off.” Ishida commented idly, smoothing her hand over the dome of the headset in her grip.

Her grey eyes lifted from the curve of the flawless helmet, to the headset in Jem’s hand. Her expression was as stoney as usual, delivering words that were far more layered than anything her countenance could convey: “You have to compensate for the imperfection.”

 

[Jem Fossk]

Jem turned her headset over, surprised when she found there was indeed a small indentation in the plastic under her fingers. "...Huh," she mused, as she hung it up with a distracted air.

She rubbed at mask lines on her face and looked back to the woman. She was still watching at Jem, but it was the stony nature of Ishida's words that made Jem question if she had missed something.

She looked over her shoulder, then back at Ishida. Her own expression closed off. "Do I know you?" She countered, the pronounced tip of her incisors peeking through her upper lip.

She tried not to overreact, but after the encounter with her father, her nerves were on fire.

Ishida Ashina

 

[Ishida Ashina]

"We haven't met." Ishida confirmed and rotated the headgear in her hands so the bottom faced up at her, and looked into the cushioning.

"You're Dagon Kaze's padawan though, aren't you?" She said, the tone somewhere at the intersection between a question and a fact. Amusement tugged the corners of her mouth upward. Of course Dagon's Padawan was related to the Sith somehow. He seemed to have a knack to constantly affiliate with darkness in a deadly tango. And be responsible for them in some capacity. “Jem, right? Gaelor?”

Distantly, Master Sardun's instruction rattled through her mind: "Those who were born of the Darkside will always be drawn to it. End it before it becomes a problem, not afterwards."

"I think I overheard something about your brave escape over Adrathorpe." She inclined her head in the vague direction of the healing halls which were conveniently not too far from the training centres. As if they predicted many injuries could be incurred from sparring sessions. "They're saying Solipsis intervened.

Seems Dagon and..if you're his student, probably you, run into him a lot."

She checked herself, the emotions rising within her. Doubt. Curiosity.

"How?" And...honestly, some jealousy. The chance to encounter the Dark Lord himself was an incredible feat. To survive — incredible power.

Well, not in Kai's case apparently. He'd just been lucky by some other distraction.

She put the helmet away and offered a gesture that brushed at an invisible barrier between Jem Fossk and herself: "I spoke with another Jedi.." Or so the Doppleganger called himself. "And they only survived their encounter because Solipsis got distracted."

 

[Jem Fossk]

"You've been tracking his movements?" Jem echoed, shock softening the tension that had building in her posture. Ishida initial approach had felt as dangerous as a slum den. Jem might have already cut in, if not for Dagon's constant lessons on patience.

Slow it down. Wait it out. You don't want to react before all the cards are down. Know what you're walking into. The sentiment did him justice; It didn't sounded like this wasn't about Jem after all.

All roads lead back to her father.

Jem hung up the training saber at its spot on the wall and considered her response carefully. "I should have died." The words were blunt and emotionless. "We all should of. ...But I distracted him." She glanced over at Ishida, gauging her reaction before turning to face her in full.

"We've been trying to undermined him for months. So, of course, he knows our names. He wants us taken in. He would have had his way too, but I got there first." Her fingers tightened into her shirt. It felt wrong to condense Dagon's imprisonment into such casual words.

She tried not to be defensive but she just couldn't help her final quip as it boiled over.

"Someone has to try to stop him. We can't all save the world by standing around talking about it."

 

[Ishida Ashina]

"You've been tracking his movements?"

Ishida shrugged. It just so happened those she was must suspicious of had the most run-ins with the Sith Lord. And the galaxy wasn't fond of coincidences.

The brunette continued, and Ishida weighed the headset in her hands. Her purpose had been to train, putting the helmet back before she'd started — while tensions still remained in the room between strangers — would have been premature.

But I distracted him."

There was that word again. Distracted.

Even though the Doppleganger wasn't in the room with them, she could feel the words he'd muttered bounce around in her mind. Distracted by someone he called daughter. It was just a word but with all the other clues that had been littered throughout the stories she'd overheard here and there, it was becoming unignorable. The question bloomed at the base of her throat.

Jem's final quip's sharpness cut through her internal dialogue.

"Normally, I would say more than someone." She wasn't looking at the helmet anymore. "But you're in a unique position.

You're his daughter, aren't you?" Ishida frowned. She hadn't meant to evidence any sort of emotion with the word related to family, but she felt her chest tighten. Her father, the tyrant, wasn't a Sith'ari, but it did change perceptions. It did give her certain advantages if she wanted to shift the family name, or its perceptions.

"But you're here. With The Jedi." She tugged at the straps as if to tighten the headgear in her hands, just to keep her fingers busy. "Fighting against him. Do you feel that's working? Getting closer to stopping him?"

 

[Jem Fossk]

Her stomach dropped out from under her, the fight or flight mode she had been suppressing kicking up and turning her skin silver in an instant. Her heritage always had a way of betrayed her, one way or another.

Ishida would feel the weight of Jem's aghast stare.

So that was it then, it had been leaked. Maybe it was just a small crack, but that was all it took for a secret to be undone. This would circle back to her. If not now, then eventually. The order's trust in her would erode and she would lose this home too.

Her biggest fear, realized.

Her fingers tucked and pried at a strand of hair, jittery as it pushed it out of the way. "Not particularly," came words of both emotion and truth. "If you'll excuse me-" The shaken girl moved for the door, too startled to think of much else.

 

[Ishida Ashina]

She hadn't known what to anticipate once she provided the inner workings of her clue-collecting. Would the daughter of the Sith'ari have been prideful? Proud of her father's accomplishments? Would she have been frustrated, scorned and betrayed by her father and relegated to a useless life amidst the Jedi? Condemned to a long, drawn-out death by her father's hunters?

Jem's reaction was tangible in more than just the physical shimmer of her flesh. The Force seemed to tighten around her, crinkling around the edges in Ishida's senses. It turned cold, and fearful. Fear was a path to the darkside.

Again, Sardun's words flared: Those who were born of the Darkside will always be drawn to it. End it before it becomes a problem, not afterwards. In that instance, ending it had meant their life. It was the greatest absolute the galaxy could offer. But ending it could go through other means, more long-lasting means that served the wider purpose. She saw that now, in the way Jem's eyes widened subtly. The way shame seemed to travel right through her and undo the posture she'd had seconds ago.

"Maybe you need to try a different approach, then." Ishida countered, stepping into the pathway and keeping the helmet at stomach height. As if it were some sort of common object that kept the pair of duelists on some equal ground. She let one finger tap against the left side of the smooth dome, making reference to the damaged piece of equipment the Padawan had been using earlier.

"The fact that you're still alive probably means something. A good something."

 

[Jem Fossk]

Jem was forced back a step, wary of the woman that held her secrets and stood in her way. At first she thought Ishida was insulting her. Or challenging her? It took several loops of her words through Jem's mind before she realized ... there was no malice in what she said.

Jem rocked back on her heels and followed the woman's reference for the helmet.

"...I don't think you understand. Dagon said he was lost, and he was right. He doesn't care who I am when he's angry. He's not my father then,"

She could still feel him slam her into the ceiling. She could still feel his wrath and taste the-- she visibly shuddered at rubbed at her goosebumps, frustrated to still be so weak a day after it was all done.

"He's a monster. What would you know about it? Just because I was born to him doesn't make me the same."

Ishida Ashina

 

[Ishida Ashina]

Father, the word, was sharp and hard. Like a steel blade that pricked at Ishida's heart, and she might have involuntarily flinched. Just a flex of her fingers against the helmet, but tight enough for the colour to drain from her knuckles. Her expressionless face softened, a distant familiarity loosening the tightness of her otherwise stoic countenance.

"I don't know." The words eked out at first. Feeling hollowed by the resonating impression of Jem's painful inflection towards her family's patriarch. It was hard, too, for Ishida to admit imperfection so openly. Not being able to fully grasp something, and to evidence that to a complete stranger, was the foundation for failure.

I don't know your father." Ishida admitted. "And I don't even know you."

She drew in a deep breath to centre herself. The helmet in her grip became her only connection to the corporeal world, she was here, on Prosperity. Not casting back to another realm on Hebo.

"But I know the burden of blood."

Her hands against the helmet relaxed, and her shoulders loosened.

"And how difficult it is to break from that expectation."

Ishida waited for a few beats, still composing herself before she continued. There was an opportunity here. Through the pain, she could see it. Feel it.

She had to keep talking. Push through the discomfort.

"What about when he's not angry?" Of course he was angry and forgetful. He was a warrior. Ishida'd been in the same boat. The heat of battle overtook warriors of varying calibres, focused them on a single objective: Victory. Worse, Jem Fossk 's father was the Sith'ari. Anger was his lifeblood.

 

[Avalore]

.

 

[Jem Fossk]

The question made her feel small. So much so that her shoulders rounded in and her eyes got wide. No one had ever tried to ask her about him before. Most just gave her a sympathetic grimace and tried to move on. Ishida's question forced her to think back to the singular reference she did have. What was he like when he wasn't angry?

She wrapped her arm around herself, trying to block the memory from view.

"Who are you?" She challenged, an edge to the retort. Moisture had caught like wildfire in her eyes-- a most embarrassing deficiency -- and she distracted from it with steel in her voice.

"Don't act like you know what this is like for me, cause you don't. You didn't grow up your whole life wanting to be one thing , only to have the rug pulled out from under you and realize its a lie. You don't know what this is like. You don't know a damn thing."

Her words were thick with emotion, but for all their dangerous she was in control of them. Lately she had to be.

Ishida Ashina

 

[Ishida Ashina]

RULES
​

"Ishida Ashina." She answered the first question with more ease than the follow-ups. The atrisian felt as though was watching a version of herself react to the news of fathers and their impact. It was a consuming sort of undoing to reflect on family when it was so unconventionally dysfunctional.

Jem Fossk was projecting, of course. And Ishida couldn't blame her. That had been what she'd wanted to do as well, if she hadn't been trying so hard to deviate from her previous behaviours, she might have had the same reaction when the farce of her childhood was exposed too.

Still, she couldn't help the small humourless hah that slipped through her teeth at the remarkable similarities Jem drew.

"I'm not claiming to know what it's like for you." She responded with a coolness she didn't feel. "I can't." A heat was blooming in her chest, tightening around the muscle behind her ribcage and making the beats erratic.

"But I know how I felt when my sole ambitions were exposed to be founded on falsities."

It was clear, unfortunately, that there had to be a little give from her side. A shift from her usual abrasive approach. "Lost, mostly. Finding direction in confusion is almost impossible. And it takes time to trust wanting something new after the last sole focus proved to be a lie." She bit her lip. "I'm still..figuring it out..honestly."

Because the road your father walks is the Dark Side.

She realized that was incredibly vague, and she pressed her palms into the headset. "My father isn't the Sith'ari, but he's not who I thought he was either."

 

[Jem Fossk]

Jem was boiling; she could feel her pulse throb in her veins. It made her awareness snap back to her body-- to the anger, and the pain-- She forced herself to unclench her finger tips and wipe them on the pants she had swiped from the commissary.

The lightside wasn't absolute, it was a choice made every day. She took a deep breath and sought to recenter herself.

"You still look like a jedi to me," she offered blandly. Was that an amends? Her skin was still a dull silver, no sign of life stirred within the colorless hue. She swallowed against the tightness in her chest and spoke without inflection.

"I know what I want and I could lose it. ...I don't care that he gave me my blood. This order is my family and I will protect it. Whatever the cost."

 

[Ishida Ashina]

"You still look like a jedi to me,"

A small noise of surprise hopped out from the back of her throat, quickly coattailed by something that sounded more dismissive. What did a Jedi look like, really? And if she did look like one, her father'd be disappointed at her readiness to abandon Ashina aesthetic for something so frugal. Her silvery eyes looked down, despite herself, to assess what Jem might have perceived as Jedi-like.

For a long while after Jem's admission, Ishida was silent. Letting the gravity of her words sit between them, long enough that their mass condensed and didn't just float away as another exchange to be forgotten.

Jem's vitriolic reaction delivered insight to her heart, and it took the white-haired atrisian a good measure of restraint not to do anything that would unsettle that vulnerable offering. In the silence, her fingers rhythmed against the headset, starting with the pinky and running through to the thumb about four times over.

Beyond the words, Jem's physical traits shimmered and shifted with her emotions. Another vulnerability, being unable to constrain and mask that level of insight. A stark contrast to Ishida's forced emotionless façade.

"Well," Ishida drawled, spinning the headset between her hands before replacing it where she'd taken it from. "You sound like one."

She smirked.

"Blood is a funny thing." Ishida continued, wiping her hands together before dropping them to her hips. "There's always been this saying circling around, half-said.

Blood is thicker than water. " She scoffed.

"It took me forever to find the missing piece of that, you know?

I'm still not sure if it's entirely legitimate or not, but apparently, the full scope is to say: Blood of covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. Perhaps it's Dathomiri, I don't know. But the choice of who you are, and the family you choose, or the family tenets you carry from one generation to the next, are a choice."

Her arms folded across her chest, and she drew a semi-circle with her foot in front of her. Grounding herself in the connection to Prosperity's floor. "Whatever the cost could be a hefty sum." Ishida murmured. "You say it like you're ready to die. Paying with your life doesn't have to mean that."

 

[Jem Fossk]

The silence was unsettling. It wasn't what Jem usually received. Her defensive tones and unfriendly habits usually received the same ire from her peers. In some ways she preferred it. At least then she knew where they stood.

She realized how much she had said when Ishida filled with the moment with.... nothing. The woman's facade revealed not a single thought. She shifted uncomfortably and took a step back, prepared for defiance.

Instead she got wisedom.


Jem swallowed hard, a bit too shocked to follow the logic in its entirety, but she got the sentiment. "You are so weird...." The tension shattered with the smallest tick of a smile, which only grew. Ishida reminded her of her brother, who spoke in riddles and was far too wise for their shared age. He always had a way of disarming her. ...She was herself around him. Her cheeks warmed, the color eeking out across her complexion.

"Aren't we already doing that? Living our lives in service to make up for what they've already done. -- What has yours done, anyways?" She asked, direct but not unkind.

Ishida Ashina

 

[Ishida Ashina]

"You are so weird...."

Prickles raced along Ishida's arms, and she folded them across her chest with an expression that pulled her features to the centre of her face in defiance. But Jem seemed amenable, and instead of scowling or otherwise, her skin warmed. The silver slipped away, graduating to tones that were marginally more human. Ishida relaxed a bit, turning that tight wrap around herself into a shrug.

"Aren't we already doing that? Living our lives in service to make up for what they've already done.

"Yes." Ishida agreed and ran her thumb over some of the stitching on her sleeve. "It's a strange path, to be so utterly defiant of what your blood wants you to do. To break generational curses.

Part of me wonders if there are ways to change from within, if there would be less resistance that way. But the strength that would require..." her sentence trailed off. By now, she was half-answering Jem's question and Ishida was reflecting on her own family dynamic. Not just Jem and Solipsis.

What has yours done, anyways?"

Ishida blinked.

In contrast to a father being The Sith'ari , Genichiro Ashina was a harmless mouse on Hebo. But comparison didn't mitigate the Ashina family struggles.

"He puts strength and titles before anything else." Ishida summarized. "I didn't realize it when I was with him, when I was training at home, but he rules with power and fear, hates everything which is weak, and destroys whatever stands in his path without mercy. Including his own father or children." She tilted her head.

"Principles the Jedi strongly oppose. He's livid I'm here." She'd meant to be brief, but now it was all flowing out and she couldn't stop. Jem had asked, after all. And if Ishida could show the horribleness of someone other than Solipsis, maybe it'd be helpful for both of them.

"I only started with the Jedi to find my exiled brother. He was banished before I was born." Did she keep going? "Just for challenging my father, he was maimed and wiped from existence."

 

[Jem Fossk]

"Principles the Jedi strongly oppose. He's livid I'm here."

She snorted, her lips slipping into a grin at the irony of their shared experience. In Jem's book that meant you were doing something right. Her amusement faltered at the final twist, her brows crinkling in disturbance.

"I... That's horrible. I have a brother, I couldn't image if my father separated us." She use to fear that the order would, back before she had managed to acquire Dagon as a Master of her own. Saan'an had been the only constant in her life. Even now, with him not wanting to see anyone... She knew that if she asked, he'd be there.

Not everyone was that lucky.

"...Did you find him?" The question was practically asked on baited breath, her eyes eager for confirmation.

 

[Ishida Ashina]

Ishida's expression softened when Jem Fossk made another attempt to relate. The dynamic between father and children was a galactic trial, apparently. And the management of that pressure within siblings was not isolated to the Ashinas alone.

"Yes." She answered. "I did." She'd found him, and instantly lost him to death — only to find out later that he'd somehow managed to defy that ending and resurrect himself. It was baffling, but through a series of peculiar events, they were able to be together again. She might finally be able to learn from him and get their family back on some sort of path to the light.

"Your brother is a Jedi too, then?" Gaelor was a name she'd heard before amongst the Padawans, and she made a face as if searching through a Rolodex of names to associate a connection. Her expression brightened when a node on the network stood out.

"Aeris' student?"

She waited for confirmation or denial, and then her expression neutralized again. Stretching into worrisome territory. "Has your father found him, too?"

 

[Jem Fossk]

Jem's face condensed into a tight pinch, putting context behind the the subtle nod. It was all she could manage.

"My father is a plague that needs to be eradicated." She grumbled, turning to let the tension explode into a pulse of the force, blowing past all the training gear like a gust of wind— like she was hitting them.

"Unfortunately the alliance cares more about acquiring territory than protecting it. He's got men in it," she told Ishida, the girl's passionate claims spread to any ear that could listen.

"Why else would he leave power? We're all shadow puppets, and we're all screwed. Maybe we should turn your father against mine. That'd be something," she joked crassly, not really meaning the harsh words she said. They just made her feel better.