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hydrospanners · 7 years

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when the stars are the only things we share on the anniversary of her aunt’s death, nirea velaran connects with an old friend in the hopes of finding her absent brother. swtor. set during kotfe. 850 words. f!jedi knight. gen.

It’s funny how memories get bound up in smells. Jedi spend a lot of time worrying about their eyes deceiving them, but they don’t say much about noses. That’s the way of the Jedi, though, isn’t it? Smart people with no common sense.

But that was before. Hard to say what the way of the Jedi is now. Hard to say how many of them are even left.

Rea turns the mug in her hands, savoring the warmth and the bitter, earthy scent. She hates caf, has always hated caf, but holding it like this, breathing it--It’s like breathing a memory.

She can feel the worn fabric of the galley booth beneath her thighs and the subtle vibrations of the hyperdrive as it hurls them through space. She hears her brother and Kira’s drowsy argument--they’re always arguing--as they trudge up the stairs. Rusk stands by the caf maker, tearing the lid from his fourth cup of energy pudding as he waits for the caf to brew.

Rea blinks, and she’s below deck. The light is the same but she knows it’s the middle of the night. It’s too quiet to be anything else. Vents hiss overhead and there’s the hum of the engines, otherwise there’s no sound but Doc, quietly slurping his caf. He’s always slurping his caf. He isn’t Doc if he isn’t winking and slurping his caf. Sometimes she wants to slap his stupid mug to the ground and stomp on its shattered remains. Now she thinks she could kiss it.

But it isn’t real. Her ship is dry-docked on Odessen and its crew is scattered to the wind. Another family lost. Her brother lost. Again.

“Didn’t think you liked caf,” Liss breaks the silence after it’s gone on too long. She sips slowly from her own mug.

“I don’t.”

Liss nods. “Didn’t think you were sentimental, either.”

“I’m not.”

She’s lonely is what she is. Lonely and tired and afraid. It’s not a great combination.

“You know what today is?”

“Would I be here if I didn’t?”

“Hard to believe it’s been twenty years,” Liss says.

Rea catches herself before she objects, before she says it’s only been fifteen. For a second, her heart stops. Her breath catches and blood drains from her face. “Twenty years,” she parrots. I’m thirty-five.

Liss gives her a minute to adjust. She watches Rea over the rim of her mug as she sips, slowly. Taking her measure. “I get what you’re trying to do,” she says once the color starts to return to Rea’s cheeks, “but it’d be better if you’d just ask what you came here to ask.”

Rea puts her mug back on the table, caf still steaming and untouched. This whole exercise was a waste of time and resources and she knew it before she left.

Still. It can’t hurt to try.

(Much.)

“Have you heard from him?”

Liss shakes her head. “I’d be with him if I had.”

That’s a truth Rea feels in her heart. Rhese was always Liss’ favorite. He was everyone’s favorite, but he and Liss had something special. She’d wanted to adopt him once, was even willing to take Rea as a necessary part of the bargain, until Ranna had shut her down. Rea never found out why. She never wanted to.

“I haven’t seen him in five years, Turhaya. Not since he came to tell me you died.” Liss lowers her cup and turns her eyes to its depths. “He was so convinced it was true. You know how he gets.” She does. There is no righteous fervor like Rhese Velaran’s righteous fervor. “He said he couldn’t sense you anymore. Neither could that girl, your apprentice. They said you’d never vanished like that before, and they were sure it meant you were dead.”

Rea hears the accusation Liss is trying not to make. She can feel it too, the little spike of anger. Her once-almost-aunt is more controlled than most Zeltrons, but sometimes it still bleeds over. “I was frozen in carbonite, Liss.” Her voice is distant and unwavering as she explains. Someone else’s voice, from far away, laying out the facts like the facts don’t mean her whole life is in ruins and she’s adrift out here, scared and alone. “I never meant to leave. I was captured. I killed Valkorion--” again, she thinks but does not say “--and his son had me frozen in carbonite. That’s where I’ve been.”

“There were rumors,” is all Liss says.

“You don’t believe me?”

“No, no. I believe you. It’s the kind of thing that would only happen to you, Turhaya.” She smiles, a little sad. “I used to think you were like Ranna, you know. When you were small.”

Everyone thought that. Everyone but Qarric.

“I was wrong. You have her cunning. You’re headstrong and you’re fearless, but you aren’t like her.”

“It was always Rhese who took after Ranna,” Rea agrees. “He’s the impulsive one. He hides it well, but it’s there. And he has her bleeding heart.”

“He sent me messages for a while. After you died.”

“Can I have them?”

Liss sighs, but nods. “They won’t lead you anywhere, though. I looked. I looked for years. Your brother--”

Silence stretches between them, deep and black. There is understanding in it.

“I know,” Rea says. “He’s all I have too.”

#swtor #jedi knight #kotfe #guess who's back with self-indulgent fic #and a side of kotfe feelings #my fic #nirea velaran #rhese velaran

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pixieof96 · 5 years

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The Bitch That is My Alter Ego

My Alter Ego, I call her She-Hulk, for she suffocates my every good thought with some negative conspiracy about how I can never be loved. How she smashes my hopes and dreams with a twitch of her pinkie finger.

She-Hulk gives me courage but in exchange she gives me fear that every attempt at love will turn to ash and crumble in my hands.

She gives me the motivation to get up out of bed in the morning but in exchange she gives me anger at the small inconveniences and makes a small argument into a hurricane of emotions.

She dresses herself in tight and thick leather as if she needs the extra protection while I lay naked in the middle of this world,cold and scared at any hand that might touch me. Her smoking habit is annoying but not as annoying as her constant talking, reminding me of my bad mistakes and pushing guilt and shame down my throat. Leaves me to think what kind of monster enjoys doing this?

But it’s not her fault, I say, I made her this way.

I gave her the strength that chokes me everyday like cigarette smoke in a crowded bar. She extended her hand when I was at my weakest and promised me the fire to be lit back inside my soul. She sealed and cauterized my wounds, so they wound up to be thick, bumpy, ugly scars. As I lay on my bed with silent tears falling to my pillows she is straddling my hips, laughing and popping gum so obnoxiously. Reminding me, I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for her.

But what the bitch doesn’t realize I don’t need her anymore. I don’t need her overbearing fists beating and clenching at my chest, reminding me to breath fire. I don’t need to set aflame my life. I’m bringing it all back together, she can sit in the corner and watch what her strength has given me. She doesn’t see how her actions are snuffing my flames that she promised to light for me.

She knows I don’t need her and that’s when she gets the loudest. When things are going good she comes up in my peripheral, swinging her thick arms around my shoulders as if we were best friends. Her thick curly black hair smells like smoke and toxic chemicals, her gray skin is tough and rough like cement, it scratches me as she hugs me and laughs loudly in my ear. “Oooo, guess what someone did?” “Did someone piss someone off?” “Oh yes, you did,they all hate you. Aw, poor pudding. Let’s talk about how no one is going to love you. And you will be all alone with just me. Won’t that be nice?” she giggles maniacally, I walk on with tears down my face as my body and emotions react to her presence.

“Go away. I don’t need you right now. Go away!” I scream I walk forward she steps in front of me, blocking my path. “Aw, bestie did I make you upset?”

Nausea rolls in from the back of my stomach as she is chattering at me and trying to press my buttons. Trying to get me to react to something. I know she is just jealous that I’m moving on and I’m trying to find my new strength.

“No one will be there for you, and you know it. You’re going to need me just like you needed me before.”

I stop as an overwhelming feeling of sadness spews from my mouth and eyes. Ugly hiccups and sounds came from my throat as her pressuring presence stands above me. She watches me cry in disgust. “How pathetic of a human are you? You were doing so well. But one sentence from me and you come ripping at the seams.” She giggles as she bends down and lifts me up.

“It’s okay sugar, I don’t mind being there, you should’ve listened to me when you had that knife to your wrists. You wouldn’t be feeling this pain.” She says this so softly and calmly, almost like a nurturing mother.

I hate her! I hate her so much, and she knows it.

She laughs, “ If you hate me then you hate yourself.”

She laughs, “I will always be here. You’ll never be rid of me.”

My Alter-Ego the bitch that she is did look out for me, she told me to shut out my emotions so I can move on and grow into my new life. She told me not to go out to that party, instead stay home in the dark and cry. Cry as if those memories can bleed out of my eyeballs as salty tears. She held me and fed me wine and liquor as I cried these tears. She smiled as I was slowly killing myself. She held me down a little longer under the water in my bathtub. I guess when you put it like that, she did nothing for me but make me more damaged than I was. She never healed my pain, she just took strands of it and made it into a huge rubber ball that she bounces around inside my chest and head. Making my ears ring as if I was inside a pinball machine.

I’ve gotten used to her taking everything out on me, now she is making me hurt my lover. The anger that she fuels me slips and drips into my words when I’m upset at a situation.

I refuse to let her have that control again, the more I fight the more I lose. But if I don’t fight I will lose what I’ve already fought so hard for. So my demon, will be silenced and submitted to a place where she won’t hurt me. I will take the power I gave her and give it back to myself and create a new alter ego, and I shall call her Cher, for she will be love. Love for others but more importantly love for myself.

#poetry #slam poets on tumblr #writer things #writing #writing things to make me feel good #learning about myself

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