Three years and a lifetime ago

[Onrai]

[member="Silfe Sosuri"]

Vanessa said nothing, only embracing Silfe and keeping her wife close in her arms. The lightsaber had long since returned to a pocket, while Vanessa did her best to empathize with her wife. Trying to instill the brainwashing back into Silfe's mind was something she legitimately could not do at this moment, both for the practical reason of potentially damaging her sanity and for the emotional reason that she just couldn't bring herself to do it.

She brought a hand to Silfe's face and began to wipe the blood away from her cheek, smearing it onto her leg. She would continue this until Silfe was composed in some sort of state. When she was, Vanessa would slowly try to help her to her feet. "Let's head home. Alraune and Aspen are waiting to see you, and we need to get you cleaned up. Don't worry - he will never harm you ever again. I've made sure of that. Plus you'll get all of his remaining assets."

 

[Silfe Sosuri]

Silfe had trembled violently as Pandeima had taken her to her ship. Her hands shook uncontrollably as she tried to wash away the blood on the trip home. The shower was as good a place as any to lose her mind and so she did as the nearly scalding water rained down on her gently from above. Every cut stung like a million wasp stings. Every bruise made every move and touch tender. There were quite a few spots where there might have been internal bleeding. Pandeima would patch those up, she knew.

Inside her mind raged. A third of her memories were gone of her life with her wife, erased by the systematic takeover of the old her. At least that's how it felt. They were small ones; a smile here, a touch there, a night of passion, or holding hands as they ate dinner together. The stronger and more emotional the memory, the more time it would take to unravel from her mind. The pain was excruciating and between that and what she had just been through, Silfe sat in the running water, curled into a ball and sobbing for the entire journey home.

When she got home, all she wanted to do was see her babies. She didn't speak to Pandeima. She didn't want to hear that she would be insanely wealthy because her father was dead. She just walked straight to the nursery where the one of the nannies that remained living had been caring for the babies. Thank god someone had cleaned up the nursery. There were no signs of the struggle and death that had occurred there earlier in the evening. Her two little ones easily rolled into her arms in the large bed and together the three of them slept.

[member="Vanessa Vantai"]

 

[Onrai]

[member="Silfe Sosuri"]

Vanessa deliberately stayed away from Silfe as her wife recovered. She would shower herself, not showering with Silfe, though she did clean up the remaining bits of blood left in the bottom of the shower after Silfe was cleaned. Vanessa didn't even sleep in the same bed as Silfe - how could she when the woman was wracked by trauma? The only good thing was that Alecard would never intervene in Silfe's life again.

The next day, she could only hope Silfe remained with the kids.

 

[Silfe Sosuri]

The babies, perhaps sensing their mother's need, slept beside her for over six hours before they both woke needing to be fed. Despite the pain it caused having them touch her skin, she fed them both as silent tears fell. Alraune was really starting to learn words and had been crawling for a few weeks. She showed her mother with pride, her accomplishments and stood at a little train table and held on so she could remain standing. Silfe wiped away her tears and joined her little girl with happy smiles and lots of kisses. Her son rolled across the brand new carpet and played with a baby rattle. She loved seeing them so happy and it filled her heart with joy to spend time with them but she knew she couldn't avoid her wife forever.

She did for a while though. Silfe remained in the nursery with the children and ignoring her wife for three days before she finally came out. Her mind was constantly burning as more memories faded away against the force of her real self coming forth, but it was so constant, she had blocked it out when she needed to concentrate on other things. "The babies are down for nap time." She said, the first words she had spoken to her wife since the morning she was kidnapped. Her voice was still cracked, husky from damage her father had inflicted, but there was no inflection. It was just deadpan and lifeless.

[member="Vanessa Vantai"]

 

[Onrai]

[member="Silfe Sosuri"]

"That's good." Vanessa replied. A sigh came from her lips - she legitimately was unsure what it was she wanted to say. Was there even anything she could say? Day in and day out whatever remained of the Silfe she had created - her Silfe - was slipping away, replaced by the woman she had defeated and broken down piece by piece. "I have some food for you, if you want to eat. The only thing I've seen you really get as of late has been water."

There was a small part of her that wanted to go over and give her wife a hug, but she knew it would likely just exacerbate things.

 

[Silfe Sosuri]

She was starving but it took a lot out of her to resist the idea of food just because Pandi had suggested it. There was so much taking away her will right now. So much of her energy was expended. She looked like hell. Beyond the cuts and bruises which littered her body, she had dark circles under her eyes and a soulful loss in them. Silfe walked slowly to the kitchen and slid the tray of meats, cheeses and fruit toward her. She said nothing as she ate, careful not to fill herself too fast. Finally, cheese in hand, she looked up at her wife.

"I am a figment of your imagination and my father's desires?" she asked. Tears sprang to those soulless eyes, real pain coming to her through them. "I am not real am I?"


[member="Vanessa Vantai"]

 

[Onrai]

[member="Silfe Sosuri"]

"No." She said. "You are real. You're just the aspect of Silfe that she suppresses. That due to her father's actions she has tried to suppress her entire life." She frowned. "What I did brought you out and locked the Silfe that's always out, the aggressive and rebellious young woman, away. And due to everything that's happened, that suppressed aspect - you - is going back into the darkest depths of her mind to be locked away." Vanessa came over and could not help but give her wife a hug. "I'm going to miss you so much." She began shedding tears of her own.

"And the worst part is, I know that other aspect of you will never accept me."

 

[Silfe Sosuri]

She shook her head. Taking out parts of Silfe to supplement the ones her father had wanted had created another person, a false one. The memories were fake until she came to be with Vanessa. Even their friendship from before their life together was fake. The life they shared was real enough, but it was based on a premise of lies and evasion, torturous pain and seductive pleasure. The woman Vanessa loved was a shell of the real Silfe, parts picked and chosen for her and Silfe's father's pleasure. Vanessa was dreaming a dream, a dream of her own creation. And there was a part of Silfe that regretted this dream was ending. Her arms wrapped around Pandi... or the woman she knew as Pandeima and held as tightly as she could. She was still weak from her captivity, but it was nearly bone crushing anyway.

Silfe knew deep inside that the woman before her loved this creation she had made but it didn't change the fact that any barbie doll could be made into the same thing. The organically made, real life woman who had found her place on Commenor with friends and people she cared about, that was the woman Vanessa had not loved and did not love. "You did not accept me first."

She gasped and cried. "Oh god, the babies! I won't remember them. They won't be a part of me anymore."

[member="Vanessa Vantai"]

 

[Onrai]

She heard Silfe's statement and raised an eyebrow. "Is that the Silfe I love or the Silfe I suppressed talking?" She continued to softly cry, leaning against Silfe and curling up with her. "It's okay. I promise I'll take care of them, and one day you'll get a chance to meet one or both of them again." She thought for a moment, sighing. "There's a term for this sort of thing. I don't know what it is, but I can assure you I'll miss it." She sighed. "I'll miss the nights we spent together, the love we had with each other, the joy of seeing our kids grow up. I don't really want it to end."

She looked at Silfe. "I'm even going to miss the fact that I never will get to know the true you."

[member="Silfe Sosuri"]

 

[Silfe Sosuri]

"I can feel it coming, the time when I won't remember this, the price I pay for getting myself back. I won't remember you. I won't remember my sweet children. I won't remember the trauma, the pain, the torture my own wife committed against me nor the torture my father committed which brought the real me back. "I wish you had not done this to me." She listened through her tears to the reassurances of her wife.... Not really her wife, though they were legally bound. They had gotten married under false pretenses. The real Silfe had not said yes. She had been adamant she would choose her own love life, that her father would not arrange it like he wanted. He had gotten his way in the end. So had Vanessa, for three years and now that dream was ending for both of them.

Pandeima did not want it to end, did she? Gods, her head ached, the searing pain becoming more insistent now as the real version of her continued to convert memories back to what they truly had been and not the false scenarios put in her mind. Maybe Pandi could fix it, bring back the doll she loved, the fake version of Silfe that had none of her true fire and emotion. She could stay and be a good mother to her kids, try to find forgiveness... then she remembered that if Pandi did fix her, she wouldn't remember all of this pain and worse, all of this truth. There would be nothing to forgive because all that had transpired would be gone, lost once more to the false doll Vanessa had made for herself. For all that this was a lovely dream, it wasn't real and Silfe wanted real. She wanted to be whole and that meant giving up on being a mother.

"I feel so betrayed." She said closing her eyes tightly and sinking into her wife's embrace, taking comfort in the only way she knew how. Eventually Pandi would be no one to her and she would be alone. "You never gave me a chance to love you as the real me. You didn't want the real me. Why didn't you want the real me?" There was no anger now, just deep and aching sadness. She gasped as more searing pain leapt through her mind and held tightly to her wife as her mind battled within itself.

[member="Vanessa Vantai"]

 

[Onrai]

"Because the real you would have hated me." She said. "I've done terrible, terrible things. If I told you half of what I had done, you would be calling Commenor's military to hunt me down. The aspect of you that I shaped was willing to accept me for what I was - a Sith Lord." She said, holding Silfe close. "I haven't had something like this, whether constructed or legitimate, in a very long time."

Such was quite true as she continued to cuddle with Silfe. "There is always the chance that your aspects could be melded with one another."

[member="Silfe Sosuri"]

 

[Silfe Sosuri]

Silfe sighed, understanding at least some small part of why Vanessa had done this to her, but she... in either form, was a woman who believed that if you didn't match, making it match in an unnatural way led to disaster. She had thought what she and Pandi had had was natural until her memories came back to her and Silfe could never live in that ignorance again.

"No," she said with a shaky sigh. "I can't be her again. I need to be me again. I need..."

Her brain was on fire and then suddenly, it wasn't. The process was so far gone, even Vanessa would have had a hard time trying to fix it and it likely would have killed Silfe to do so. Her eyes strayed to the nursery. The door was open and she could see the cribs the babies occupied. "You have to help them understand. Don't let them hate me for leaving."

She turned back to her wife... her captor and kissed her softly, conveying in that kiss all the pain, love, mourning, and regret she felt. Then she stood, a little dizzy. She stumbled a few times as she walked to the nursery, it becoming harder for her to concentrate.

She kissed each baby on the head, smoothing their hair. She told them in whispers so as not to wake them, how much she loved them and was sorry she could not stay.

[member="Vanessa Vantai"]

 

[Onrai]

"You wouldn't be her. There would be no her. Only Silfe. Both sides of the same coin combined." She frowned, but as Silfe stood and stumbled towards the nursery, Vanessa came over to help support her as she walked over to their crib. Tears came to her eyes as she talked to their children for what likely would be the last time - children she didn't even know she had, or wouldn't know soon enough.

Vanessa gave her another gentle hug. It was disappointing.

[member="Silfe Sosuri"]

 

[Silfe Sosuri]

"I don't believe you. I am not real. I am a figment of your imagination, a puppet you molded out of the clay that was already made into something else. The real Silfe, the one who grew up with an abusive father and fought past it to make her own way... she is real." the voice that spoke was soft and broken... truly broken. She no longer trusted her wife, no longer could imagine her own world as safe. "I need a ship. I need to get away before I can't remember and I wake up as her, confused as to why there are two toddlers nearby and the Sith Lord that kidnapped me."

The memories were starting to come, ones with the most emotion. As well, her own modern memories with the most emotion were slipping away. Her tears were drying. She was becoming numb to everything. It was almost like she was dying so that the real Silfe could live and she was okay with that even if Vanessa wasn't. She stood fully intending to leave and find a ship but she felt so weak. "Help me."

[member="Vanessa Vantai"]

 

[Onrai]

"You are real. The life we've had together these past couple of years is real." Vanessa sobbed. "I helped that Silfe. I killed her father so she would never have to fear for him getting his hands on her and abusing her ever again." The broken voice harmed Vanessa even more than Silfe's own words did. "I can't." She sighed. "I can't let you get away." She moved in and tried to give Silfe more support, more of an embrace. "Don't die. Please."

"You're all I have left in this galaxy."

[member="Silfe Sosuri"]

 

[Silfe Sosuri]

"Then maybe one day she will see that my love." Silfe said before wincing and crying again in pain. "My head is splitting. This is the consequence of messing with someone's head... someone's memories and personality. You did this to me. You made me live and how I can't anymore. I cannot exist at the expense of another. I am not that way. You made me not that way. That's the ultimate irony isn't it? Call it faulty programming." She said with a half laugh.

"Now help me get to a ship Pandi. You have our children. The children I made for you, I bore for you. You know what I want for them. You are not alone anymore and I need to let go or this will kill us both inside."


[member="Vanessa Vantai"]

 

[Onrai]

A frown came from Vanessa as shessuftly led Silfe to a hyperspace-equipped shuttle. She didn’t say much, but upon opening the craft’s doors, she gave the woman a last hug and a kiss before letting her walk up the ramp of the ship. When the shuttle door closed and left, she frowned.

“Goodbye, Silfe.”

She would some days later place the children into cryostasis, where they would eventually grow. [member="Alraune Vantai"] would one day be taken out and raised as Vanessa’s daughter with no knowledge of her origin aside from perhaps some forgotten memories. Life would continue on.

And their paths would not connect.

[member="Silfe Sosuri"]

 

[Silfe Sosuri]

It broke her heart to leave her children and her wife, but she felt she had to. Memories were unraveling faster and soon she would not remember them at all. The part of her that existed in the last three years would be gone, overwritten by the real woman who's body she had just been a custodian of. Her last kiss with her wife was full of emotion, pain and sorrow and loss.

She made her way to the cockpit and set her course to a local hospital droid facility. She picked up 3 droids and then she set another course to make her way slowly to Commenor so that she could get through this change and arrive home after it was all done. She set up the droids to assist her throughout her time in their medical care. It wasn't the level to which Vanessa provided. The scars would remain, fresh and new. Then she wrote a letter to her real self. Its content's for Silfe's eyes only.

Before she put herself in the medical bed, she looked out the massive window of her ship and saw Cyrillia quickly becoming smaller as the distance grew. It was actually sort of the perfect allegory for her current condition. Who she had been on that planet was receding too and would until it was nothing but a spec in the sky and just as unfathomable. Her hand touched the cold glass, tears spilling from her eyes. "I couldn't tell you. I couldn't admit it, but I can now. I will miss you Pandi... so so much even if I never understand it. And ah! my children. My babies. Protect them my love. Care for them. Tell them I loved them, I did."

She winced as pain shot through her mind, another reminder of what was to come in the following weeks. She turned from the dream and laid in bed, ready to get back to reality and the truth of the person she really was. As she closed her eyes, she whispered, "Bradshaw."

[member="Vanessa Vantai"] [member="Bradshaw Ku"]