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Iskellia’s respirator hisses slowly and evenly as she sits quietly in the darkened meditation room of the Jedi Temple on Viscara. It’s her preferred meditation spot – the special sound-damping generators in the walls block out all exterior sounds from outside the room, and the low light is calm and soothing to her. The steady hiss of her mask has always been the key to her meditation, ever since old man Beryn taught her that particular trick to concentration.
“…I want you to think about what you would do if you met your father again…” Callista’s words echo in her mind, over and over. Underneath the respirator, Iskellia grits her teeth.
Think about it? For a decade after leaving Alderaan, she had done nearly nothing else but imagine the meeting, a hundred different ways! Attacking him, burning him, shooting him dead, some visceral act of bloody vengeance to take revenge for the fires that destroyed her face, destroyed her body, destroyed her life. A bill long overdue, her chance to finally strike back just because she wanted to, wanted him to feel that pain she bears every day…
But…sitting, dreaming of violence and revenge? Living for nothing but vengeance?..That was something, someone, that she wasn’t any more.
Breathe in, breathe out. More memories, more voices from the past rise to her mind as she sits, thinking, meditating.
“Why are you helping me on this? Not to look an opportunity in the mouth, but…”
Old man Beryn Mornstrider, his eyes sparkling knowingly as he sits at her kitchen table. “Because you aren’t going to take revenge, Iskellia. You aren’t looking for it. You don’t want to kill him.”
“Yes, I do!” Stubborn, reflexive contradiction.
“Bantha shit. You just want to know WHY he did it…And if he knew what was going to happen.”
…That was the crux of it, right there. Damn it. Beryn had a talent for putting his finger right on the center of any issue, cutting to the heart of something.
Why did he do it? She remembers a few datacards, charred in the rubble of her father’s office, back on her home on Alderaan. Comms records of his call to the child welfare company, who sent out the psychologist to evaluate her. That man’s mind a closed durasteel cage, his face betraying nothing but polite interest as he watched her levitating toys, furniture, putting on a show. Those pale eyes watching everything, the pale hands tapping notes into his datapad. His footsteps as he walked away down the steps to his speeder after a polite farewell. Never seen again. Who was he? Iskellia couldn’t even remember his name, anymore…
Breathe in, breathe out. Keep it calm. Let the memories come, let them wash over and pass by…
…Then, of course, the night itself. The Sith death squad, the soldier-assassins sent after her. Her mother, crumpling over her. The cold visors, looking down at her. Screaming in fury, telekinetically crushing them like drink cans, gore oozing between the durasteel plates. The incendiary grenade, vaporizing her mother Alma. Starting the fire. Trapped under the collapsing bed, burning, screaming, melting…
The parade of misery and pain flashes through her mind again, but by now Iskellia has control of herself to not succumb and get drawn down into the agony and horror. As a Jedi, she’s better than that, more controlled now. Her gnarled and crooked left hand still curls into a fist, though, under her customized gloves Callista gave her. The constant pain from her burns is part of what fuels her, gives her focus, concentration, power. Power from pain. …Funny, isn’t that a Sith tenet?
Breathe in, breathe out. A tiny mechanical hiss converting the kolto into a fine mist down her ruined throat. The constant pain easing slightly.
But when she actually steps back and reconsiders that horrible night, those events, from as neutral of a perspective as she can…Looking back as an adult, Iskellia readily admits that she was a child like a telekinetic wrecking ball, with no training, little restraint, and only her mother Alma’s desperate pleas towards morality. Kandor’s sneering, his lectures, his anger towards her, she recognizes now as born of fear. Fear of her, his own daughter. What had she expected her father to do, really? She supposes she was lucky he tried to reach out for clinical help, instead of simply exiling her or turning her over to the authorities for murder.
What actually, objectively, really happened? Did Kandor send in the Sith? Probably not, she had to admit to herself. <He might as well have!> a distant, rebellious part of her brain cries. Iskellia had murdered two kids in self-defense. Kandor took the family and moved from Juranno to Aldera. He reached out to…what was that name? Novalife. Probably a shell company, likely long defunct or dissolved by now. He reached out to Novalife, who sent in a child psychologist to evaluate her. A psychologist, she knew (assumed?) now, was a Sith agent of some sort, who was probably who sent in the death squad.
But…Beryn put his finger on it: Did Kandor know Novalife was part of the Sith? Was that why he chose them, reached out to them? Kandor always operated several layers removed from his preferred outcomes; she knew and learned his political style firsthand. She couldn’t entirely rule out that he knew what would happen.
Another breath in, a breath out. But…What did it even matter if he had? It was over a decade later, now. A younger Iskellia held onto that grudge, nursed it, fed it with resentment and anger and pain. But as a Jedi, isn’t she supposed to be better than that? Constant pain is still her lot in life, this is true. True, she still bears the scars on her face and body, inside her lung. True, she still takes what feels like an entire pharmacy worth of medicine in the morning just to manage her symptoms from the diseases slowly tearing her apart. Still coughs up blood in the mornings. Even as a Jedi, her physical health is so far from “normal” she sometimes thinks it’s a miracle she wakes up in the morning. But as a Jedi, it’s been so, so much easier to manage. Using the Force to help ease her pain, heal smaller aches and maladies that she would have simply suffered before. Having the medical ward right down the hall in the Temple itself, letting her make quiet appointments with the medical droid. All for free(!).
Part of her is still angry, Iskellia has to admit. But a Jedi has to be better than that. Better than anger and rage and resentment. Better than blind vengeance.
She shakes her head, echoing her advice she usually gives to others. <Okay, say you did the thing. Take that, play it out. What happens?> If she somehow found him, and she walked up and telekinetically snapped his neck, what would that accomplish? Just one more dead Sarken. Murdering the last connection to her past. For what? Satisfaction? Revenge?
What would that say about her? What would Beryn say to that? What would Callista say? What would the rest of the Jedi say? “And now, Iskellia Sarken, we confer on you the rank of Jedi Knight… don’t worry about having murdered your father, it’s totally fine. We completely condone patricide if he really really deserved it.”
She rolls her eyes under her eyelids with a quiet snort. Yeah, that’s not happening.
Breathe in, breathe out. Like Beryn said…she didn’t want to kill him. She just wanted to know why he did it, and if he knew what would happen. But…then again…what would it change, what would it matter either way?
Suppose he said Yes, he deliberately sent the Sith in to remove his problematic power freak of a daughter. Maybe not kill, but certainly to remove her. A special school or something. Such ruthlessness wasn’t usually his style, but…suppose he made an exception. So what? What would that mean? It would mean he’s an asshole, but, well, she already knew that. And she hasn’t spoken, seen, or heard of him in the past 12-ish years, so it’s not like she can cut him out of her life any more than he already is. She already knows she’s not going to kill or attack him – no matter how much she wants to – because Jedi are supposed to be better than that. So, petty physical revenge is off the table too. Which leaves…what? Something, surely…
Iskellia shakes her head, her thoughts chasing themselves around in circles. Meditation and inner peace is so far gone from her that she might as well not even keep up the pretense. She slumps, rubbing her temples. A flash of memory: Kandor, sitting back in his desk chair, massaging his head in exactly the same frustrated way. She snatches her hand away. Fuck, was he where she got that habit from?
Her filters hiss as she sighs. Climbs to her feet with a wince as her hips protest: The right side shattered long ago, the left side’s skin still mangled and scorched. The worst of the burns were on her upper body, head and arm, but there’s a reason movement still pains her, at least when she’s not using the Force to suppress and ignore it. Still, it’s only pain. It can’t kill her. Quietly enduring suffering is practically her whole identity as a Jedi. Unbreakable.
Her wrist chrono beeps. Well, meditation is shot anyway. Time for morning practice, (painful) stretches, lightsaber drills. Then maybe getting to finally sit down and examine those telekinetic Holocrons she’d borrowed from the Archives.
Another sigh, cracking her neck with a wince. More pain. Just another day.
The door hisses shut behind her exit.