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In the dark privacy of her quarters, with no-one around but the droid standing motionless at the foot of her bed, apprentice Deskyl meditates. Remembering how to establish a telepathic link is hard, and doing it is even harder, but she thinks in this case it will be worth it.
Hello? It's more a sense of presence than a proper word, easily mistaken for just another thought by someone not expecting such a thing.
Oh, she likes it.
He sends out a few more ripples. They split at the edges and crackle like lightning.
(This is distracting her from eating, some. The droid waits patiently.)
And the droid resumes feeding her. The good mood lasts for a little while, even though she immediately forgets about its cause.
...it’s hard to feel things disappear so easily. Harder not to panic. But it’s fine.
Once she’s done eating, he starts to do some of the exercises she taught him.
It helps, feeling her be happy. Even if he knows she’s not all there.
It also distracts him, for a while, from what he thinks is coming tonight. (He’s not completely sure. It’s sometimes hard to keep track of time in here, when he doesn’t have her schedule to go by.)
He keeps practicing through the leaden feeling in his stomach.
He keeps on practicing anyway. Right now, this is the most important thing he can do.
Lightning sparks around her. The bed catches fire, and soon the rest of the room follows it.
He’s in no position to help.
(And right now there’s something—right—about everything burning to the ground.)
It's chaos, and then more and different chaos when the droids arrive with the firefighting gear.
They wrestle her into the bathroom - she's not resisting, but the electricity sparking in waves over her skin is its own hazard, and more than a few fall to it - and leave her there while they take care of the room.
Not too long after that, her master appears in the doorway, and waves at her, and then there's nothing but a vague awareness of her breathing and heartbeat, still rapid but slowing toward their normal pace.
The chaos and the conflict are bad. Her pain and fear are bad.
But it all being gone, that’s worse.
He struggles, this time, even though he knows there’s no point.
The blankness fades into sleep, eventually, and swirling, abstract dreams.
In the morning, she wakes in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room.
He didn’t sleep much, the night before. He’s dizzy and his eyelids are heavy.
As soon as he notices the room is different he prompts her to look around. Better to think about this.
It's - a room. Bare, aside from the bed she's on; plain medium-grey walls, wood floor like the rest of the facility, one door. Her droid, or a similar one, is standing by the door.
This doesn’t look good.
This might mean they’re running out of time. It might mean they’ve given up on her.
...It might just mean they’re fixing her room up.
it’d be
really great.
if you came back soon
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