Fury.
Ashi Tevarl returned to the abandoned Coxxian base where she had been practicing her K’thri, feeling dead, and clasping and unclasping her power-gauntleted hands over and over again, because the blood had finally all been pressed out of them, as hard as she had been clenching her fists.
‘Know your place’.
The very first words a Jedi Master had ever said to her.
And Ashi was flying, her mind uncertain where the ground was, through the roil of bare-contained fury that was clenching her gut into knots. Beryn’s Padawan? No, clearly not. Beryn’s Initiate. She had been a Padawan all of ten hours before the Council had overturned that decision and shifted her away from Althea.
Months. She had given months to this. She had come back for this. She had wanted this. To be a Jedi, to do what was right in the universe. To be around people that cared about her, and that she, herself, cared about in turn - and yet.
One of the Vellen rounded the corner, flapping its stubby, wingless arms at her, as it cocked her head quizzicially. She picked it, and took it at a run.
Her arms had begun to move on their own, and she turned one arm in to block the swipe and deflect it, and then crashed a powerful right jab into the bird-horror’s chest. It screeched at her. She bounced up on the balls of her feet, ducked and danced away the return swipe. They traded blows for only a moment or two more before Ashi saw her chance, caught an outward swing - rotated her hips - and jumped sideways.
Ashi flipped, swinging herself on the thing’s momentum, and crashing her foot directly into its beak with all the strength her leg could muster, picture-perfect like the holovid trainer. The beak shattered. She landed on its corpse, crunching the rest of the skull to fractures, as the brain oozed out beneath her boots. The base was quiet again. She sighed out the rest of her air.
Months under Sandra. No paperwork. No record of her training. No nothing. She hated Sandra.
Another bird-beak rounded the corner, drawn by the noise, and Ashi stood up, her fists shaking as she clenched them.
All that time with Mart, and he had seen her trace the sickness in Viscara, knew that her gut instincts told her right, and he’d still disrespected her abilities. And so Ashi hated Mart.
Her feet started to move, and she let herself go along with them, drawing her arms in tight, and beginning this dance over again, as another rounded the corner to join its fellow.
All that stuff that Kho had done for her - and he’d had the gall to suggest that she was the only initiate incapable of his trust. And then he’d turned out to be a pirate. And then he’d hit her, and thrown her down an karking elevator shaft. And she hated Kho Khan.
She hated being weak, even though she was likely the strongest Initiate in the sector, and she hated feeling stupid, even though she knew more of the Code and the Order’s dictates than Beryn did - even if it was just something as basic as when to draw your lightsaber - and more than most Padawans, if that fool that Althea had been asked to test had been a general representation of the ones assigned to other Knights. Who the kark had to read the Jedi Code off of a karking datapad?
Ashi had lost her past, and her home. She had lost her dignity, and clung to a shred of hope through everything - that she could find a home again. That people might not be the dirty, evil bastards that she’d knew them to be for thirteen sordid years in the Cartel - that had kept her going. That there might be some beauty to be found anywhere that she stood, that she could make a home anywhere. That there was some justice in the world worth fighting for, some sort of universal fairness that would pay it back to her in time; some reason for all the hurt, the suffering, and the pain.
But there wasn’t a reason, and not even hard work mattered. Not patience, not damnedable honesty, not kindness or caring - they’d spit on all of it, and that fool old grandpa had just been the icing on the cake, treating her like a child when she was twenty. Four. Years. Old.
ASHI SCREAMED.
And the Rage came on her, crashing through her extremities as she pulled in the Force, hit the first Vellen at a dead bolt run, and crashed down with it, pounding. And pounding. AND POUNDING. Her vision blacked, her blood burned, her voice was a scream that tore the breath out of her lungs, and yet she had the breath and the Force and the power to continue. She did not feel when the other Vellen tried to stab or pry her off, but beat the thing until it were beyond the realm of death, and then started in on the next one.
And when she was finished she were covered in blood, and panting, and shaking gently, and most of the way through to the very end, where she had wanted to go in the first place, feeling like the rest of her life had gone out of her with the rest of her dreams and her aspirations and - her pride, her sense of self.
Damn them. Damn it. Damn her, whatever was wrong with her.
She sat down on her heels, trying to sort her mind, as the weakness crept in, and she realized that the wetness on her face wasn’t blood - hers or the Vellen’s - but tears. She couldn’t stop them. They just leaked out, and she wiped them away, trembling. She had broken her gauntlets, so she took some time to wrap her bloodied hands and knuckles, too new to K’thri fighting to have formed too many callouses yet. The blue flesh was ugly and black, from - from whatever it was.
No, she realized, she knew what this was. This was the yawning gap before the drop into madness. Something had just snapped in her, and snapped hard, and she felt it pulse deep within her guts, waiting to rise again, if she didn’t swallow it down. This was the lightning - the dark side - the same thing her Master had used, that had got her into trouble with the Council, and demoted. The same thing that had driven Mart’s son to try and strangle her, when she had been only trying to help.
Now that she felt it, really felt it, she realized how impossible and naive a task trying to draw him back was; it was a roil, and a burn, and an ache, and it wanted to be used. Even if it broke her.
How did it come to this and how had she gotten here?
Did Althea even know?
She needed to talk to someone. Anyone. And Althea had suddenly become her only real friend in this hellish, unforgiving, evil mudball.
Dimly, she dug into her ruined pants pocket, wincing at a scrape she hadn’t felt, and dug out her Holocomm.
“Heya,” she said, softly, “Alth. You uh, heard the news?”