The Discarded Corpse of the Girl That Went to War

[Azzy]

I am not the girl that went out to war. I am the woman that survived it.


I am the woman who lived, the woman who learned. The woman who lost.


Anx Minor changed me, in more ways than I know, and not enough that I will need. It is a good start. A necessary start. There is no room among the Sith Order for the childish girl that copes with humour, that avoids questions by answering with questions, that chooses to deflect instead of embracing that which makes her strong. No, that girl died on the warfront. She served her purpose, but I abhor any attempt to retrieve the corpse.


The presence of the platinum haired apprentice had changed drastically between departing for war, and returning for it. It crackled and whipped around her, almost weaponized by her subconscious, or perhaps it was a trauma response - a defence mechanism. Whichever may or may not have been the case, it was a certainty that the juvenile joviality that had inherently found itself baked within her core had been replaced by a callous coldness. 


It was reflected in her words likewise - often as fleeting as sunlight through the sky of the only world she could call home. Months ago, the healer was nothing short of smitten with satire in moments both called for and not. Willing to carry a conversation with nearly anybody that would lend an ear to it, eager to allow it the time to run its course. If a conversation consisted of more than two dozen words, it was a long conversation for Faelice now.


The space she’d chosen to put herself this time was slightly damp - though the same could be said for almost anywhere outside on Dromund Kaas. This, however, was more a result of waterfall mist than the incessant rainfall. The thunderous crashing that dominated almost every auditory channel she might have hoped to use, ever the accompaniment. 


The water didn’t react to her aggressive presence - though why would it? There was nothing Faelice could do to change it even if she tried. The overwhelming cascade of mountain water falling from the mountains that the Horuset estate had been embedded into had no reason to fear her, no reason to be wary. The regular fauna gave her a particularly wide berth, though. They knew well enough to avoid that which posed a threat, even if they didn’t have the power of a Sith to read the roiling anger, the ripples of pain, and the everlasting despair that lingered in the space around her.


There is beauty in death, in chaos and destruction. There is no need for it to purely be an ending. What comes to an end paves the way for a beginning to come about. Those that believe a finished book to be the closing of a story are too simple minded to see that a page can be written over, and made into something new. No, we relish the chaos and destruction that comes in the wake of our actions. We thrive in the knowledge that death dealt by our hands gives birth to renewed strength, a refreshed vigour.


I spent too long shying away from it all, fearing that I would be swept up by being too close to the explosion that always comes after. I see, now, that the only thing to be feared was the fear of committing to the Dark Side. A Sith that stays on the side can be nothing. Will amount to nothing. A Sith does not settle for evading the call, she steps into the current. She will make room for herself within its depths or she will die trying. There is no calm at the eye of the Dark Side’s storm. There is only ruin.


Faelice’s arm had healed some time again, but she still found herself going to scratch and pull at it every now and again. It never was an active thought, but it had become a quiet habit. The actions of the Sith Sorcerer had embedded an anger into her mind that, even if she wanted to, wouldn’t be easily shaken, if it could be pushed aside at all. An anger that came hand in hand with a more subtle fear. A fear not of the torturer, but of what the tortured might find herself falling into if she wasn’t careful. She knew her journey was sacred as the destination, but also that she was dangerously close to losing her footing on that path. The discarded corpse of the girl that went to war was dangling precariously off that edge. Letting her go had ensured the woman holding her up had a chance to move forward. There never was another choice.


Loss.


Nobody expects it. Nobody thinks they will lose what they hold in their grasp. Nobody considers that they can lose the unlosable. Nobody thinks that they will lose themselves.


I did. It was not a future I put time into the envisionment of. I was blindsided.


I lost the sight in my eye, in defence of a jedi attack. It can be fixed, through ritual or repair. If that fails, replacement. It does not change that it was lost. I pushed myself too hard for the sake of others, and in doing so I gave up a part of myself. I cannot allow myself to be anything less than the first priority. I will not see myself in that position once again. Nobody will care for me other than myself. They will not get the first call of my attention.


I lost myself, in reflection of the events on the fronts. I allowed myself to be consumed by the past, emotions ran rampant with no restraint. The lessons I thought I needed to continue looking back on, the reminders I gave myself of the events that marr my mind  came back to haunt me both. In their place, and running alongside them, are new lessons. New reminders. Ones that serve me better to this day. The ones that came before are not forgotten. I do not believe that they ever will be, but they no longer reside at the forefront.


I lost her. Or, perhaps more aptly, I gave her up. She was no longer useful to me. Perhaps I had felt that way for some time. A relic attached to the girl that went to war, one that has no place in the collection of the present. I could not guarantee the strength that she would give me, and the time has long since passed from when continually diverting my strength for the sake of an individual was an acceptable outcome in my mind. 


I know not of whether the love will be lost in time, but the usefulness expired long ago. Sith do not pull themselves down for the sake of dragging another up, for in time it will see them overtaken by the very hand they sought to reach down to. I refuse to be surpassed by that hand that I stretched so far down for. Her memory is a burden I will not run away from carrying. I am past that now. She will better me in her absence as she could not with her presence.


Waterfall mist sprayed the air around her with a seemingly never ending stream of droplets, foamy from the force they’d been kicked aside with. Her robes were soaked, though the climate around the estate meant that she could have been sat by the tumbling water for mere minutes, or for long hours. The rain was always indiscriminate.


She reached behind her head, freeing her blind eye from its imprisonment under the patch. It didn’t make much of a difference to what she could see. Even so, she sat for a time, motionlessly staring at the thrashing waters in front of her. Droplets formed freely on her scarred face, pulled down to a fate unknown under the weight of their own existence, only to be replaced by another, cursed with the fact that history tends to repeat itself. Silent tears welled in the corners of her eyes, though they blurred so convincingly with the rain and the spray that nobody would have been able to tell unless they’d been told.


Misfortune is not always unfortunate. The cursed do not always succumb.


Faelice rises to her feet, the patch returning to its duty as jailer of the unseeing.


There is no room for wallowing. The past cannot be changed.


She turned aside, the visual of the waterfall leaving her sight, but its dominant presence was never in question, the sound flooded her ears as it had done since when she turned up to meditate on herself.


There is only embracing what has happened. Ensuring that losses were not in vain. There is strength if I reach for it, there is no consideration for another option.


She started back towards the estate proper, but hesitated a moment. A longing glance at the clearing by the rocks. 


The unnatural rage and fear, despair and pain eventually withdrew from the edge of the lake. The indescribable chill in the air warmed itself once more, and the sound of the Kaasian fauna hid itself within the sound of tumbling water, as if nobody had interrupted the primal rhythm of nature.

Time had restored the area to its natural state, and would do so again whenever it next found itself faced with such challenges.

There was no such guarantee that time would heal the healer.