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[narcissithstic]

HATRED all will suffer for their crimes.	SERVICE within it, glory beyond measure.
CONTROL chaos brought to heel through pain.	FEAR failure, weakness, mediocrity...

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

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[narcissithstic]

[This is childish. A task so far beneath him that he could-- without so much as a glint of regret-- sever the connection in that instant. There are others aboard the ship more capable, more willing to hold her hand as she learns not to fall or falter.

The fact that it is her asking, however, stays that instinctive response.]

Briefly.

[erbier]

[ There are better teachers of the act itself, she can think of several, and she may even ask them when this task is complete. She needs him for something else. At his consent, she opens up, like peeling the skin from a grape to expose the tender flesh of her phobia.

The pool is a blue jewel. Its color so bright and so clear that it almost looks poisonous, artificial to her. She has never seen something so pure, never seen so much water collected merely to play in.--( She knows dingy water straight from the ground, she knows tin wash basins and rusted spigots. )

It feels like a trap. A surge of certainty from nowhere, perhaps some figment of a cruel story told her once upon a time, a genii and a mirage, luring you closer with something desirous. Luring you close and then pulling you in, wrapping you up in water and filling your insides while you thrash and bubble and then sink, cold with empty eyes and soft blue lips. Something beautiful, something deadly, she can almost hear the speech Dreus would make about the beauties of the world, treacherous, unseemly. ]

Help me.

[ She's willing to go deeper into the brambles between them to lose this. Willing to give up something of herself. That was always the exchange with the Hive, was it not?

She'll surrender it, if he'll accept her, replace her fear with his confidence. ]

[narcissithstic]

[Fear is potent, corrupt. It boils in his veins as clearly as the rage that fuels him and-- in spite of what the Jedi say-- there is strength in it. Desperation breeds determination, after all; the violent thrashing of something cornered rather than paralyzed. Or it ought to be, at least. His life has always been muddied with conflict that binds, rather than frees. Locks him to the spot of his own indecision.

Those days are gone.

For her, they soon will be as well.

Because there is nothing so new about peeling away memories like something physical and passing them off with purpose: Ren keeps the memories of water that are more...fragile close, but where she holds her fear, he offers the simplicity of experience. Life aboard Starkiller Base, the Finalizer, where troops and officers alike needed the comfort of recreational training within heated pools of glossy water. Not blue, but pitch dark and seemingly endless - a byproduct of the hewn obsidian stone that lined it. The deck would always be abandoned when he dared to use it (locked off on his own orders) but it was-- at times-- like swimming through the stars themselves once the light hit the water at just the right angle. Water lapping at bare, flecked skin. It was routine, and it was comforting as much as anything could truly be with anguish beating hotly in his chest.]

[erbier]

[ She has to let herself drown in it. Has to leave herself open to the imprint of it, let it fill her lungs so that she can no longer breathe the noxious terror of her own fear. By her God, she had not even realized she was always so afraid, she had become so numb and comfortable with the terrors that she knew. Dreus had helped her with that, weaved a web of acceptance around her that made demons of all mankind, not to be trusted nor to be loved, except for he himself, most divine.

She has to let that go too.

Don't fight it.

It pains her not to, like the calling of an addiction, and brief gagging impulse to struggle is painful, choking on water rather than slipping peacefully out of herself. Briefly all the stars are falling, balls of fire that crater the surface of some distant world, but she regains herself with the spilling of furious tears, lips pursed, and they melt back where they belong, pin pricks of white in a dark mirror.

Anguish in dark waters. The rhythm of treading water begins to lull her in, and finally she sinks all the way to the bottom, staring up through murky layers at the distorted lights above. She does not resurface as herself, but as a piece of a part, body slicing through water, it does not matter whose. Rippling through the darkness, alone, not alone.

The way her restraints are suddenly gone is like a sigh, a long exhale, nothing but stars in her mind. No words, just comfort in him. ]

[narcissithstic]

[For a moment, he lingers too long in the absence of thought. So near to the placid peacefulness the Jedi once tried to bear down onto his troubled shoulders that it could border on disturbing, were he easily jostled by anything but his own insecurity. Instead his breath finds him, one palm braced across the table at his side.

This is where he exists, now.

Fortunate for her that he can leash the endless pull of the Force, keeping it from touching her at least for the moment. Better to spare her that anguish when she's already working to endure.]

Anything else?

[erbier]

[ For a brief moment there's a radiance there, an expansion of light and hunger. For a moment the answer is yes, everything. She ropes it back, and there they are each of them keeping the hounds at bay, hungry teeth too close. Could she take it, all of it? And what would that make her if she were to do so... Why does it call to her at all. Is it just this insect inside of her that makes her feel this way? That sours the pleasure of it, like maggots in a corpse. She strives to be so much more than merely that.

Ah. She won't trouble him with that. There are some things that should be handled with your own two hands, rather than bargained away. ]

Thank you.

[ The words themselves are inadequate, but they serve their purpose. A punctuation to this, an end note to an exercise, although as the closeness of her thoughts recedes it never truly leaves. ]