Private Terms and Conditions

[Nida Perl]

//ZELTROS
...
//perl family home​

Nida had no words left in her.

Bar the richest echelons of the galaxy, no one had ever described imprisonment as being a leisurely experience; and although her stay at the Sunspot Prison could have been a lot worse, it had changed Nida on a fundamental level. Subtle, collective changes that distorted the image of who she used to be just enough.

Maybe nothing really changed, if you stood far away and squinted hard enough.

Situated on the couch of her childhood home, Nida’s hollow gaze fixed on the enormous HoloTV screen. They had one in the prison, a smaller, far outdated model that could only be accessed at certain times. Fights often broke out over who could gain control of the remote, and Nida learned to find enjoyment in some of the trashiest holo programs to ever exist. The volume always mingled with loud voices, distant and near, shouts and the occasional scream.

Here, the room was eerily silent. Claustrophobically so. Her hands fidgeted in her lap, then picked at the seams of the couch cushion, then twisted the hem of her shirt. Nida didn’t know what to do with herself.

A tearful reunion with mom culminated in her having to run to the office to take care of an emergency. She’d be back tonight, and they’d have her favorite dinner. Then they would talk about her next move, about the time she would spend rebuilding the lost pieces of herself with Master Tiland.

For now, Nida busied herself with pulling stray bits of thread and feather out of the pillows.

Kyra Perl

 

[Kyra Perl]

The front door to the Perl house slammed shut.

"Mom! Mom!" Kyra's voice rang down through the hall, the demanding tone filled with excitement. "He did it. Dad did it. It didn't even take the whole week, I can pick up cheerio's now. Where's the chopsticks, I wanna try-" Her voice spilled into the living room, the younger Perl charging in without taking in the cues around her.

There was no purse at the door. No credit stick or smell of Shanel 135 lingering in the air. The house was unusually dark, but she had been attracted to the living room like a fly to light.

She stopped short, her eyes locking on the little pink form wrapped up on the couch. Shock shifted quickly to bout of fear. It came on too strong and too fast for her to control it. The force ripped the hidden saber out from behind the mantel. It jumped into Kyra's left hand, the dark space basked in a sudden green hue. Kyra was two days early.

A fleshy pink hand trapped in an arm sling flexed, wanting to join in.

"Wha-wha-" her mouth moved liked a fish struggling for air. She couldn't breathe. The green light bounced violently around the room, pointed at nothing as her mind fought to catch up.

"Nida?" She exclaimed dumbly.

 

[Nida Perl]

Nida’s skin prickled in response to Kyra’s excited shouts drifting from the door, down the hall, and into the living room. It had been ages since she’d heard her sister’s voice, and even longer since she’d heard her be happy.

Paralyzed with adrenaline, she stayed put on the couch. Which turned out to be the right move, because an instant later there was a lightsaber flailing in her general vicinity.

Magenta eyes watched the green blade as it shifted aimlessly in response to Kyra’s confusion. Her sisters’s bewilderment was palpable; written on her face as much as it seeped into her voice and guided her arm.

In response to seeing her baby sister again, Nida couldn’t help but manage a tiny, tired smile in the face of the broken trust between them.

“...surprise.”

Kyra Perl

 

[Kyra Perl]

No chit.

Kyra balked, looking wildly over her shoulder for a sign of their mother. Joza had apparently not had the time to give either a heads up. Either that or she saw no reason to baby or facilitate a less intense... meet up. It had been a year since Nida went to jail. Two years since the mission that awoke the agent inside her.

But they were still sisters, weren't they?

"You're out,' she stated, dumbly again. 'Mom hadn't.... Mom didn't..." Yikes.

She stormed over and flicked on the light, erasing the shadows from the room. The saber hissed shut. Her head tilted Nida's way, unable to help the wary way she beheld the dejected form of her sister. The whole space was clouded with their anxiety. If there was a button to turn off her empathy right now, she would push it. She didn't like the way it clouded her thoughts. She let out a heavy breath, her bandaged hand flexing unconsciously.

"Where's mom?"

 

[Nida Perl]

Kyra killed the saber, but that did little to soothe Nida’s nerves. They hadn’t had any contact since…

for…

…a while.

“She’s out.” The smaller Zeltron rasped, finding now that all of the moisture had been sapped from her throat. “There was a work…emergency.” A concept that the siblings were all too familiar with—Joza was as present as she could have been while raising her family, but the demands of heading a company lead to late work nights and the occasional rush back to the office. Once they’d gotten older, they didn’t mind as much. Yula would take care of dinner, and they kids would entertain themselves for however long it took for their mother to return. Most times, they fell asleep before she made it home.

Pink fingers tightened over the edge of the blanket she was cocooned in. She felt…small and foolish. “She didn’t tell you…?” Surprise curled the edge of her tone, wondering why their mother had neglected to tell Kyra the date of her release. News had been hard to come by in the past year, so she assumed that there had to be a good reason.

“We were going to have dinner before I have to join Master Tiland.” The second part of her sentence. After prison came the long, winding path to atonement under the guidance of an experienced Jedi Master. Hopefully, that would end in the expulsion of whatever darkness existed within her.

“You can…join us if you want. I mean-“

Ever invite someone to dinner in their own home?

“Urhm. I can go, too. If you’re uncomfortable with…”

With me being here. With me being.

Kyra Perl

 

[Kyra Perl]

Work emergency. Right.

Typical.

Kyra rocked back on her heels, her thoughts catching up to the shock that had shook her core.

“She didn’t tell you…?”

Kyra shook her head. She hadn't been the most responsive lately, come to think of it she had dodged any topic that wasn't clothing or snacks. She hadn't left people much room to talk with her . Maybe it wasn't so much 'Mom didn't have the time', but a bit more 'Kyra didn't give it.'

"She didn't know I was coming," she croaked, realizing then that Mom ...must have been juggling a lot. One kid without an eye, the other out of jail, the last with a new arm being sown on.

And now dinner? Together? Pretending nothing had happened and nothing wrong could ever happen again? Nida was still a sleeper agent . A switch flipped, it was all too much.

"No, I'm just gonna-" She turned bursting for the hall like the room was water and air awaited on the other side.

Nida Perl

 

[Nida Perl]

“Wait-!”

Nida practically ejected herself from the couch, reaching after Kyra before she could get too far. Once she closed the gap between them, her fingers circled around her sister’s wrist. Gentle, but firm. Consciously so.

It had been a year since they’d so much as seen each other, and even that had not been on good terms. They hadn’t smiled or laughed together in years, and Nida desperately wanted that back. Maybe she could never have it again, maybe things between them had deteriorated beyond repair.

What Nida was too anxious to see, was the fact that Kyra hadn’t immediately denounced her or chased her away. She was overloaded, yes, and she needed time to think. Processing her sudden appearance would take time. It meant that somewhere, Kyra still loved her sister.

“-don’t go.”

There were a thousand things Nida wanted to say in this moment, and none of them would help. Instead, her wide, hopeful eyes and desperate, guilty expression spoke for her.

Kyra Perl

 

[Kyra Perl]

Nida Perl

Kyra flinched, her fingers clenching up in unspoken protest. It was a silent scream, her whole body frozen as Nida's emotions suffused her.

The world walloped. For a moment, that's all there was.

And then she snapped back to with a sickening gasp, and yanked her wrist away. "Don't touch me," she snapped, her voice hoarse and thick with Nida's desperation. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, unable to place where she was ... who she was... oh right... mental exercises ran through her head like mice on a wheel, granting her clarity.

Her wrist tingled. She clutched it to her, a childish look of accusation leveling on Nida. It was as if she was four and Nida had taken her favorite stuffed bunny all over again.

"You stay out of my head. No pheromones, no empathy. No nothing. And don't you even think about Thirdas. I see what you're trying to do here."

The words hissed out of her, crawling from a dark place of possession that Nida had never had to face. Not on this side of the fence anyway. Kyra's knees were shaking. There was not a rational hue in her eyes. Nida was a threat. If she had a coffee, Kyra would have knocked it over.

"You stay away from him too."

 

[Nida Perl]

The way she stiffened to her touch was louder than any scream. The soft angles of Kyra’s face sharpened, and she wrenched her hand away.

“I’m…” Sorry died on her tongue. Nida was a remorseful person by nature, but sorry was like hitting a wall with Kyra. It wouldn’t help.

Wide violet eyes creased not in hurt, but in confusion. All this time, Nida knew that she had hurt Kyra. The hurt between her and Thirdas had been strictly between the healing lovers, and it hadn’t crossed her mind that Kyra would be angry and distrustful of her on Thirdas’ behalf. She was aware they’d bonded over the past year, but the apparent depth to their relationship had shocked Nida. Before her venture into the Dark, she was consistently mediating her sister’s antagonistic behavior with her boyfriend.

Now, as Thirdas had said, they were sworn siblings. Such a drastic change, in part mediated by her departure, was impossible to believe until she’d seen it. Kyra cared fiercely, deeply for those she loved and would protect them at all costs—a trait inherited from their mother.

“I will.” She agreed softly, tone sullen but even. “I will stay away from Thirdas. I don’t want to be with him the way I was before, not unless I can be sure that whatever part of me that made me hurt him, is dead.”

Unintentionally mirroring Kyra, she grasped her own wrist, idly working the skin between her fingers with soft undulations.

“Or...under control, at least. I don’t really know how these things work.” She gave a shrug of her petite shoulders, looking as demure as ever. Surely, the Masters would have a better handle on what her prognosis was. “I don’t want to trick or hurt anyone. I want to be normal again, or as close to it as I can get.” Too many scars had been carved deeply in all three of them for things to go back to how they once were. Nida’s goal wasn’t to turn back time—but rather, to learn how to move forward.

“And if I can’t, then…” Running her finger along the side table, collecting dust with the pad of her thumb didn’t help ease the heartbreak from unspoken words. She said them anyway.

“I know Thirdas is stubborn and will want to be with me no matter what. I will not risk hurting him again.”

Her lips thinned, face hardening with a rare determination. The same expression Yula wore when choosing her shoes.

"I want you to help me keep that promise, Kyra. If I can't control whatever made me hurt him and you, do not let us be together."

Kyra Perl

 

[Kyra Perl]

Nida Perl

Kyra blinked hard, looking once... twice... three times over her sister.

"I- I will," she asserted with wavering confidence. Never mind that Thirdas wouldn't have that and she couldn't control a grown man, her intention at least was there.

"Don't think I won't. Cause I have. And I will."

"No Sith marriages in this family."

She put down her foot as she did that, looking vaguely like their mother. It was odd to be the rational one in this equation. It was usually Kyra swinging by the seat of her pants. Where her heart took her, she went.

Fear was a much larger motivating factor here.

"I mean it." And... apparently she did too? Kyra's brows pulled in, her head tilting as she looked at the stranger for the first time. No... not a stranger. The nervous tick... the energy of discomfort inside ones own body. The desire to put ones safety above all else. S'ida hadn't cared about how it would affect Kyra to join her. She just wanted it. Was this a trick? Her gaze dragged up, catching her sisters. They were both blue.

"...Nida?"