what?

saw you

dunno what he's planning, but

helps to have someone to talk to

if you want

thanks. (this is a sith thing probably kind of dangerous but oh well)

not bad so far but i'm not confident it's gonna stay that way.

why is this happening?

yeah, I'm a Sith. not in much better shape than you, though. Frustration and a slow-burning stubbornness come through with this observation.

he - experiments. torture. usually just slaves; usually not that. dunno what he has you for. guessing - figure out - that not being fun? you're not goona have a good time.

ok. gonna stop being fun. good to know.

think i was a special order or something. guys came and got me where i was working.

- unusual; not uncharacteristic. he's very straightforward, most things. very Sith.

what's happening to you?

There's another wave of rage-frustration-stubbornness, and the communication devolves from wordless thoughts to direct sensory impressions - of trying to talk, to think, to even hear properly, to make sense of spoken words, and finding herself unable; of some other Sith, older, male, in crimson robes, who she loathes and fears and wants to kill and needs to deceive, giving a barely-understood order, but one that she knows means that she is to harm herself, push herself further into the abyss, and her hand twitches toward her saber, involuntarily, and he flicks a spark of painful electricity at her for it, like she's a misbehaving pet; of being pushed aside in her own head while the Force uses her as an instrument of destruction, and of getting just a little, and just a little, and just a little less of herself back afterward, a slow death.

i'm sorry.

There's a light swirl of acknowledgement-appreciation, and then a long pause - maybe she's done; maybe that's it for today. But, eventually -

I'm not supposed to be a person any more.

I'm not sure how much longer I will be.

well

when you kill him, let me know.

A sensation like laughter, but without much humor.

She echoes his wry amusement, and there's a sense of, yes, of course killing him is the plan; there's even some hope that it might succeed. Will.

and if you wanted to pick me up on your way out, i wouldn't say no.

More amusement. He has no expectation that she would.

If I can. She seems to think it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do, but the logistics of it might be a problem; she doesn't expect to be able to beat the Sith who has him in a fight, in particular, and while she seems confident that she can avoid running into him, she might not be able to do that and get anyone out of the slave quarters.

oh

thanks.

The fact that the situation he's in is actually a bad one is...a little difficult to keep hold of, but he's grateful nonetheless.

Another pause; she seems to be trying to figure out how to respond to that.

Nobody deserves this place, she settles on after a minute, and there's a sense that doing so was an exhausting effort.

He doesn't know what to say after that.

(He's afraid.)

She meditates.

I am here, now; I am surviving this moment.

It's the only thing I need to do.

This moment is survivable; I am surviving this moment.

He starts to drift off while he feels her meditating.

He doesn't know, now, how important it will be to hold onto this, but he holds onto it nonetheless.

She drifts off, too.

The next night, she's back, starting off as just a gentle sense of presence.

He grabs onto that as soon as he feels it.

i wondered if you'd come back.

A strong sense of relief.

Yeah, I'm here. It's a little further from being words than she was yesterday; more a sense of her flowing around him, surrounding him with her presence.

You okay? She knows he's not, but she doesn't know what's wrong, or what happened.

The presence helps. Being able to feel someone helps.

...showed me him taking arms and legs off. one at a time.

thought it was real the first couple of times but they started coming back.

Oohf. Sympathy; a sense that she's familiar with the phenomenon, if not the exact scenario.

it didn't...feel bad. but i kept thinking it was really going to be gone.

Yeah. And they might be, eventually; that's entirely the sort of thing he'd do.

She sends her presence swirling more clearly around him, infused with what comfort she can offer; it's obvious that it takes some effort, but she can keep it up for a little while.

It lifts the weight off him, softens his mind. He manages to relax.

that's...thank you. for that.

A note of satisfaction, almost pride, colors the comforting presence, briefly strengthening it.

Are you - okay otherwise? Enough food, room temperature's okay, that kinda thing?

He reflects her pride back at her automatically.

yeah. it's boring, but fine.

i guess if i'm suffering in here it's less effective out there.

Yeah, exactly. I can... book... she's got the concepts, but she's having trouble putting them in any kind of grammatical order - but here's a visualization of the room he's in, showing where the camera that he'd have to hide any contraband from is, and here's an image of a droid - one of the flimsier feminine ones that bring his meals, not the sort that assist with the torture - and a sense that she can be instructed to bring him things and trusted not to tell anyone about it.

Risky for you, if he catches you, but.

Oh. He sends his understanding.

what's 'risky', here? worse than it'd be anyway?

Yeah.

Well, you might enjoy it. Don't think he has a masochist protocol yet. But - if he knows how to hurt him, he will; that's the sort of person he is.

He takes a second to process this information.

...he's already getting there. with the stuff from today.

it's going to be bad.

Yeah, it is. She swirls around him again, worried now.

I'll be here if I can but I can't... promise anything. Even if I keep holding on they might send me out anytime.

thank you. for trying, i mean.

i really don't want to be alone.

Yeah. The swirl is weakening, noticeably, but she keeps it up.

If I'm here, I can always hear you, even if I can't talk. If you reach out, at least.

okay.

He tries to hold onto her presence as long as he can.

She stays, quietly, for another half hour, her swirl of presence dissolving slowly into wisps and eventually dissipating entirely.

She seems a little stronger, the next night.

nothing happened today.

- not a good sign.

yeah. thought not.

i keep...going over everything that could happen. i can't stop.

Yeah.

She pulls him into a meditation, again:

Peace is a lie. There is only Passion. Nothing is ever still; nothing is ever empty. There is always something to have feelings about.

Through Passion I gain Strength. Those feelings give direction, focus, purpose -

Through Strength I gain Power. - and that purpose is the base on which one builds effectiveness.

Through Power I gain Victory. Effectiveness is for getting the things you want, and the things you need.

Through Victory my chains are Broken. Having the power to get what you want and need is true freedom.

The Force shall free me. A Sith's effectiveness is their power in the Force - and, half-broken as she is, she's still strong in it. All she needs is the right opening, and then, yes, it will free her. Him, too.

He follows her through it. It's enough to keep him stable.

He echoes the words back to her, follows the concepts with images of his own, of stowing away on a mineral cargo ship off a lonely backwater planet and crawling out of his hiding place freezing and half-starved and telling the men there that they never saw him and then surviving.

You did good. Sometimes there's someone stronger but that's not your fault.

yeah.

and when we get out i'll keep going. you will too.

He thinks "when" with conviction.

Yeah.

Hope you get along with DZ, she's coming too. The droid, from before; the trustworthy one.

...droids are good. i think i'll probably like her.

Making plans makes it a lot easier to forget what's actually happening.

She's a sweetie.

I'm not - sure - whether they're people. I think so. I plan to keep her and not wipe her and find out. And be good to her if she is; it's important to be good to someone when you're raising them.

i think you're right. they always seemed like it to me.

He shows her an image of the one they had helping around the house when he was growing up, trying badly to hum while peeling potatoes.

Awwww.

DZ doesn't sing but she likes when I recite poetry, I think.

...can i hear one?

(not hear. you know what i mean.)

Yeah.

She pauses, considering; vague impressions of various poems come through the badly-filtered communication channel before she settles on one that she's been focusing on recently.

For every parcel I stoop down to seize
I lose some other off my arms and knees,
And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns --
Extremes too hard to comprehend at once,
Yet nothing I should care to leave behind.
With all I have to hold with hand and mind
And heart, if need be, I will do my best
To keep their building balanced at my breast.
I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;
Then sit down in the middle of them all.
I had to drop the armful in the road
And try to stack them in a better load.

[source]

He likes it, though it reminds him of the dread he's trying so hard to forget. He tries hard to keep hold of it.

(to prevent them as they fall)

good words.

Yeah. Very - that's my task, for now. Carry as much of myself through as I can.

I'm doing okay. Been - a year, little less? Don't have an equilibrium but I'm getting by.

long time to be losing pieces.

hopefully it's done soon.

I think so.

What I need is an opening; they've been getting less careful of me as I lose bits, and I'm doing that slower than they think. Might be able to let them think I've forgotten how my saber works, soon, that might do it.

...losing stuff like that, too?

He's concerned.

sounds like that'd have them let their guard down, though. (who are 'they'?)

I don't think I'll actually lose that. But I can't talk anymore, except sometimes poetry. Can't do names. Get lost, sometimes, in strange places. That kinda thing. Anything that's not something she's directly perceiving in the moment, she can't depend on being able to remember when she needs it. But so far her muscle memory seems to be intact, and reaching for her saber when she needs it is more that than anything else; she's not having trouble walking, either.

Master's the problem, but the other apprentices matter too, they all talk to each other.

...must be hard to lose that kind of stuff.

don't think i'll probably be helpful, but if i can be, let me know.

Droid reminds me stuff, that helps. Getting harder to figure things out, though, even on a good day. Like this one; this is a very good day.

All he can send is hope.

She echoes it back. Having another friend helps. Through passion I gain strength.

through strength i gain power.

through power i gain victory.

yeah.

hang in there, I need you.

i promise.

He means it.

Good. She sends the hope swirling around him in lieu of a hug.

Soon.

soon.

He savors the feeling of affection while he has it. 

Yeah.

I should sleep; sometimes I get two good days in a row if I sleep a little extra. If you'll be okay.

...yeah. i’ll be okay.

good.

One last swirl, and she's gone.

The next morning, her master makes her leave her saber behind when he picks her up from her room. She lets him, more or less - a perfunctory growl makes it clear that she knows she's being pushed - and tries to warn her friend that something is clearly going to happen today, but she's not familiar enough with him yet to manage it without meditating.

It’s a couple of hours before it starts.

no no no no no no no no

There’s a feeling of sickness and violation and panic that starts out creeping and dull and becomes sharp and overwhelming.

It doesn't take much to overwhelm her, these days. A droid shows up where he's being worked on to ask his torturer to hurry up, as he's disturbing His Lordship's pet.

It’s done quickly after that.

Once he’s back in his cell he remembers the blind spot she showed and curls up there as tightly as he can, tucking his head into his knees and covering it with his hands.

He stays like that a while.

(The feeling is still there, but it becomes muted over time.)

She rolls in like a stormcloud, dark and dense and utterly wordless, still sparking with rage and pain.

[Scattered images. A doll cut in half from the waist down. His legs held apart by metal. A pet in its carrier. A syringe.]

Rage, enough to overwhelm her; the connection flickers out as she loses hold of it, twice, three times. There's a longer pause before the fourth connection; she's calmer - not calm, but the roiling wall of emotion has been pushed back a little, or perhaps she's just found the eye of the storm. In the background, she chants, over and over:

you deserve the space you are currently occupying,
the air in your lungs, the clothes on your back,
you deserve everything you have ever wanted
to be placed at your feet like an offering.
you deserve space, so much space,
room to manoeuvre and spread out and breathe.
if i could, i would bottle the stars for you.
if no one else will, then i will carve out a space for you,
use my own bare hands if i have to.
you deserve the space you occupy,
you deserve to occupy space, as much space
as you need, as you want, as you can,
you deserve to be comfortable. to be happy. to
have everything you have ever wanted placed at your feet.

[source]

All he can do is listen and cling onto her presence and her anger.

He doesn't know how many cycles it is before he can manage words.

it wasn't his.

it's not fair.

...occupy space, as much space; not fair, she echoes, firmly;
as you need, as you want...

He starts to repeat along with her, real lips moving as his mind forms the words.

One line stands out bright between the others:

i will carve out a space for you

use my own bare hands if i have to; a bloody promise.

She's calming down, slowly, slowly, the rage transforming into a fierce protectiveness, smouldering like banked coals, like the stubbornness he's already seen from her; this height of emotion may be unsustainable, but she'll neither forget nor forgive what's been done to him.

He almost feels like he can touch her. Her mind wrapped in his, though, is enough.

(Not enough to fix this, not enough to make it okay, but enough.)

He tries to bury himself in her feelings, in her desire to protect and her stubbornness and the grudge that he has not recovered enough yet to even begin to hold.

She's so strong; she's not filtering hardly at all, and he can feel, if he looks for them, all the sharp edges of inability, but none of them touch the fundamental strength of will that she's sharing with him - this is survivable; she'll carry him, just as much as he needs her to, that kind of strength is the one thing she has in endless supply.

He’s in awe.

He can make it, with this, with what she gives him.

(She made it a year: he just needs to make it through now, and now, and now...)

He finds her meditation: he doesn’t know if it was in him or her.

i am here, now; i am surviving this moment.

you are. we are.

it's the only thing we need to do.

this moment is survivable; we are surviving this moment.

He stays close as long as he can.

The droids bring him meals. The first one, he ignores. By the time the second one arrives he tries, fails, tries again to keep some of it down. He succeeds, the second time.

She stays close through all of it; if there are droids bringing her food, she's ignoring them so thoroughly as to not notice them at all.

By dinnertime, she's regained some of the clarity that suggests that she might be able to talk to him, though she doesn't seem to have anything in particular to say.

am i the first one like this?

Yeah.

guess you can't tell me what happens next, then.

Part of him is glad, though, that he's the first one to go through this particular torment here.

Do you really want to know?

i don't know.

It's not impossible to read his mind. I think I'm in good enough shape to do it safely.

...if he realizes i already knew you'd be in danger.

i think maybe it's better to just...

wait.

Yeah.

Small risk, but very bad if they do figure it out. And it won't change what happens, anyway; that would be worth it, no question.

I bit Master, today, she sends, a little point of pride. When you panicked I did too, got him good. She sends the memory: managing to surprise him, the taste of blood in her mouth, the momentarily-comforting full-body thud of being slammed into a wall, before the pain hit.

Another moment that he can forget fear.

good. proud of you.

His heart thuds like he's really there. It's thrilling.

Yeah.

It'd be easier if I could let them forget that I'm dangerous, but I like that they won't.

Yes. That's good.

scare em a little for me.

Will do. (No she won't; strategically inadvisable. But the sentiment is there.)

He savors that for a moment and then it becomes impossible again to forget.

he just 

took part of me.

it was easy

Yeah. I -

She doesn't intend to send the memory, but she's filtering so little, he can't really help but see: She's younger, weaker, still clumsy with her new saber, when one of the other apprentices challenges her. She loses, of course, and he takes what he wants - the memory is a jumble of pain and violation and confusion - and leaves her curled up, shocked and sobbing, in her bed.

And then there's a flash, in the here and now, of near-overwhelming frustration, and the filter slams into place. There's nothing meek or embarrassed in the wave of apology she sends to him; she's furious, at both herself and the situation.

He doesn't know how to wrap his mind around hers the way she does for him. He tries anyway, clumsy and weak but still an attempt.

The moment of memory that comes through (head slamming into the wall and falling disoriented to his knees) is mostly unintentional.

I'm fine, she sends; it's not a lie, or at least she believes it.

I didn't kill him; by the time I could I didn't need to, I'd made him stop. He's dead anyway; challenged the wrong person.

glad he's dead.

Yeah.

(The filter starts slipping again. Most of what's behind it is just more anger.)

It’s okay. He’s angry too.

He curses this whole place with as much conviction as he’s ever had.

We'll get out. They're stronger but I'm smarter. And burn it to the ground when they go.

we will. we will.

He repeats it, as if to make it true.

we will.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake -

[source]

His door opens.

no

He scrambles back away from the open door.

She swirls around him again, stormily.

I'll stay? she nudges, while she still can.

please.

Yeah.

She settles in, arranging herself so that nothing short of being attacked will shake her loose of him, and then watches through his eyes, growling involuntarily when she sees where he's being taken.

He recognizes the hall they take him down.

same as the first day.

He doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want to know what’s changed.

She gathers herself in close, apprehensively. Do you still want me to stay? She hadn't quite realized that this might be the plan.

well...i saw yours, didn’t i? by accident.

He starts to laugh out loud, through tears he hadn’t felt before.

might as well show you mine.

And he doesn’t want to be alone.

She doesn't leave him. She does her best to distract him; it's not great background for poetry, and half the time she loses her place partway through, but she remembers enough, at least with fragments, that she barely has to repeat herself at all.

He still aches in the same ways, and he’s thankful, but he can’t think about what’s happening to him. Not now.

He tries to follow the poetry, stop the sensation from his body.

He fails, halfway, and between the fear and shame and pain it feels good and he thinks sorry, sorry, i’m sorry over and over for a reason he can’t name.

It’s a very long time until it’s over.

He has nothing to be sorry for. It's not an assertion, not a thought; it's an awareness of a fact about the world, like skies being blue or fire being hot: he's not the one in power, here; he bears no responsibility for it.

She redoubles her sense of presence, regardless, and waits with him, and then it's through, and she swirls around him one more time - you survived; you are surviving - and lapses into wordlessness.

They take him back to the cell.

He curls up on the bed and feels her until he can’t remain awake any longer.

She's there, again or still, when he wakes; she spends a few minutes trying to remember how to communicate with him in words before giving up and shoving concepts at him - her master, coming to pick her up from her room as usual; her uncertainty about whether it will happen today - more likely than not, but less likely than usual; her awareness that she can't yet hold the connection while not meditating; the fact that she can still hear him, regardless.

He gives her the same weak, flickering attempt at an embrace as he did the other day.

He sends her his understanding, the anticipation of the connection returning at night, and what hope he can hold onto.

(His fear is there, but he tries to brighten everything else, make it overshadow the anticipation of what might come next for him.)

Strength. Strength. Strength. And then a wave of displeasure as she notices her master's approach, and she lets the connection go.

She's back earlier that evening; she's in no better shape mentally and distracted by pain, but sends a wave of frustration-tinged relief when she makes the connection.

A moment of happiness when he feels her presence.

nothing for me today.

for you?

She can walk, but she accepted the droid's help getting to bed anyway. Her memories of how she was injured are already dim and distant. She wishes, sharply with regret, that she could still heal herself.

[An image of him sitting beside her bed: her appearance is vague and not really defined, but it is clearly her, somehow.]

She sends appreciation, and swirls thinly around him; she's not weak, exactly, but even mental effort aches, and most of her energy is being used elsewhere.

He wonders what she's doing.

it's okay if you can't stay.

He wants her to stay, badly, but she needs all the strength she can get, and he's not breaking down so much right now.

No - stubbornness, stubbornness and willpower - staying is important; because he needs her, and for another, forgotten reason too. (The swirl gets a little more substantial, and even as she manages it he can feel her gasp in pain and curl up tighter, and a moment later be covered with and comforted by a thick quilt - the droid, her droid, she loves her droid.)

He loves her droid too, almost immediately.

He doesn't push her to leave. He tries to send her his own thin, wavering energy again, stay with her as much as she's staying with him.

She stays. She's weaker, less alert, not even close to being able to communicate; she responds to his thoughts as if they were her own, more often than not. But at the same time, she's doing something new; he can feel her, lying in bed, aching, as if her body was an extension of his, smell the tang of sweat from earlier exertion, see that her eyes are closed, until they briefly aren't, giving him a view of crimson bedthings and crowded dark-wood bookshelves. Only hearing is missing; there's something like it, but - garbled, delayed, almost to the point of uselessness, and she's mostly ignoring it.

...oh.

His first instinct is to try to wiggle his? her? fingers. 

She has to cooperate, but it doesn't take much effort to. Wiggle.

This is incredible.

why?

She doesn't know, but she does know that there's a reason.

She trusts herself-who-was-smarter on it; it will, probably, make sense when the fog lifts.

That makes sense.

He tries to move her arms enough that she's hugging herself gently.

She stops him, when it pulls painfully on the bruises at her back. But she gets the idea, and she loves him, too.

Loves him!

He puts his own arms around himself, shy, like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

(It’s good, though, and that will keep them alive, too.)

Aww. He's so cute. Of course she loves him.

[An image of a young girl cradling a furry animal in her arms that he doesn’t mean to send.]

Gosh. (Sith don't get to see many cute kids with furry animals.)

—oh, she liked that. Well...

[Viewed from an alleyway, two men each holding a little girl’s hand, swinging her up into the air. She’s giggling.]

[A soft, furry six-legged creature barely visible in its nest inside a fallen log. It’s curled around its pups.]

[A sunrise over glittering snow.]

Aww. Aww. Aww. And then a moment of confusion - what's that sunrise from? She doesn't watch sunrises; sunsets are so much better. She's going to name herself for them, when - when something. But she's going to. Pradnakt.

pradnakt.

[The same view of a field of snow, with a single track of footprints. Above it is a gorgeous, fiery sunset.]

Awesome.

She uncurls on the bed - it still hurts, but she doesn't care - and opens her eyes to show him the sunset scene above her bed, a bas-relief of stone and gems lit from behind.

...it’s beautiful.

yours?

Pleasant memories, of sanding down the large plates of stone, of sorting through diamonds and rubies to find ones that would glitter just so, of sneaking glances at the stored materials when she was meant to be working. Yeah.

He pictures painting delicate lines with gold leaf down some of the curves. His hand is quick and steady.

She mimics the action, inviting him to practice with her hand again, but then freezes in bafflement, caught between an impulse to go to her gym and have him practice lightsaber forms with her and a strong directive to not do that.

He figures whatever that directive is is probably important.

i can just try your hand, for now...

He tries to mimic writing in midair, then count up on her fingers.

They're clumsy, at first, but the trick of it seems to be finding the right balance of control; they'll need practice, but only that.

They don't get very much before the droid shows up with his dinner.

...okay. He can figure this out. If they just keep trying–

The door opens and he freezes in terror before he realizes it's just one of the droids.

It takes a minute for him to make himself move to accept the food.

She abandons the sensory aspect of the telepathy - it doesn't disappear entirely, but fades into the background as she stops paying attention to what she's feeling - to swirl worriedly around him.

When the door closes he tucks himself into a corner with his food and waits a minute for his heart to calm down.

...just a droid.

Yeah, but - she's sure that there's a reason he reacted like that, the same way she's sure there's a reason that practicing letting him guide her is a good thing, but she doesn't know what it is, and it worries her.

you don't–

No. It's fine. She...loses things, but she gets them back. It'll be fine.

Yeah. (She wonders, momentarily, if this is as bad as it gets, or whether there's something she'd be warning him of if she remembered it. She thinks there is; she feels basically okay, right now, and she's pretty sure that there are times when she doesn't.)

He eats his food quickly and mechanically and tries to settle back down so he can look through her eyes again.

(He's troubled, not knowing what 'worse' would be.)

Her food comes shortly after his, and she doesn't rush, and by the time he'd done she's taken a few bites of the fancy bacon-topped twice-baked potato and is about halfway through the honey-mustard glazed salmon steak, with a little scoop of baked wax beans and wilted spinach as yet untouched next to them; her droid is sitting on the bed next to her, holding a glass of something light and bubbly to avoid the risk of it spilling. She smiles a little and sends a half-remembered hug when she feels his attention return.

Oh. Good food.

He stops everything else so he can focus in on her sense of taste.

Yeah.

She takes her time with it, enjoying taste and texture both; the drink, when she sips from it, seems to be sparkling pear juice.

He can definitely enjoy this, after the identical and incredibly bland meals he's been getting.

(If this were given to him, at this point, he would be suspicious and terrified. Through her, it's just good food.)

Good.

The meal seems to strengthen her, her thoughts getting more complex and abstract, slowly, as she eats. Near the end, she stops all of a sudden, her stomach sinking - I forgot your - and she sends the memory of giving a bonecrushing hug.

He echoes the memory gladly.

i thought...i knew you'd remember. it's okay.

He's so glad she's come back.

It's not, really.

(She shouldn't be pushing herself to do words, she really shouldn't, but fuck that; angry as she is she'd do more harm stopping herself than continuing to do just what she wants.)

Force, but we need to get out of here.

yeah. out of here would be good.

Yeah.

I have a plan, she sends, spearing her last bite of salmon and gulping it down.

That definitely has his attention.

i'm listening.

She pauses to think of how to explain it, and promptly loses her ability to do anything involving that many words. She continues anyway, gently stretching out her back and limbs while she explains.

What she needs is, put simply, an opening; in practice what that means is her master alone, distracted, away from the other apprentices, in the right part of the compound for her to get to his quarters afterward to get the spaceship passkeys - and, she needs to be in good enough mental shape herself to challenge him; she's deceiving him right now by being in the habit of acting more impaired than she is, which means she won't slip up and wreck the whole thing, but also means that most of the time, even if there is an opening, she can't take advantage of it, because she can't trust herself to recognize that it is a good time to break those habits.

It'll come together eventually, but if he helps her, it will be much faster. Letting him pilot her is less effort than making decisions about how to act, when she's having a bad day; the more she can rest on bad days, the more common good days will be. And if he takes to piloting fighting well enough, they might not even need to wait for a good day at all.

i can do that.

He can carry her through the worst days. He can move her when she needs to be moved. He can.

He tries to get a hold of her hands again and lift them enough to see.

It's easier already; it's not automatic yet but it feels clearly like it could be.

Good.

He practices. Hand signs, counting up and down, writing with her finger in midair.

After a minute of this, the droid sets the glass on the bedside table and signs to the Sith; it's an unfamiliar sign language, but he can see the meanings in her mind.

Ma'am? Are you all right?

Yes, she takes back her hands to sign. Escape things.

Okay, she signs, more hesitantly. I don't understand how that could help.

Yeah. Words are hard. (That one is all one sign.) Later.

Okay. She takes the remains of her dinner and leaves her to it.

...i want to learn that too. maybe after we’re out.

and i like your droid.

Yeah. She's so good.

He can probably make her sign? He'll need to back off a little, let the automatic bits do their thing, but she thinks it might be possible, the same way making her fight might be possible.

That seems like an excellent way to learn by immersion.

He tries to move back enough to attempt some signs: I can speak with my hands.

Not quite. She puzzles over it, tracing the path to see what she'll have to give over to him, increasingly displeased with what she sees.

I could get really hurt doing this. You, too, if something happens and the feedback goes wrong. It's more or less exactly what she's been doing with the Force that has her so muddled, and while it being another person is different, she suspects it's not different enough.

...just the signs, or all of it?

Letting you - be in my head that much.

What they've been doing so far is safe, but letting him use her skills means letting him past her filter in a way that scares her.

then let's not.

It's firm. He doesn't want to do anything like what's been done to her already.

She relaxes. But then - we might need to.

...if there's no other way, then...i guess we'd have to.

but if we don't need it i can't do that to you.

She's a little bit baffled. That's risky too. And for him more than her, maybe - it hurts you more if we're slow.

if it’s like what he does to you–

A jumble of emotion, anger and disgust and sorrow.

risky is fine. 

There’s an iron core to him showing through, a strength of will a little different from hers.

Oh. That makes sense. She echoes his strength back to him: what a wonderful surprise, that he's like her in that way.

...oh.

It’s different, seeing himself through her eyes. He likes it.

we’ll do it perfectly without that.

Yeah. Yeah we will.

Time to practice some more?

(While admittedly distracted by hopeless infatuation?)

Yeah.

(When the droid passes back through she pauses to sign, the boy is so good!

She doesn't seem to know what to make of that, and after a moment signs back It's good that you're happy, ma'am.)

He likes being good.

tell her i said hi?

He says hi.

Oh. Hello.

i’m glad she’s coming too.

Yeah, she's pretty great.

Help me explain to her what we're doing?

He can do that.

we’re practicing me moving your body for you so you can rest on bad days. i think that’s how you’d say it.

She has him repeat it, more slowly, so she can sign it out without having to remember as many words at once.

Oh, the droid signs back. That makes sense. Good.

fingers crossed that i can pilot you without falling over.

I think we'll be okay. Want to try?

why not? worst that happens is that i bonk your head, i guess. (sorry if i do that.)

She's not worried about it.

She scoots out of bed and stands, a little gingerly. Okay, go ahead.

Carefully, he attempts a few steps.

She moves fluidly, with supernaturally good balance, and she's in excellent shape; moving around takes quite a bit less effort than he's used to.

–wow.

A million things to do come to mind, and none of them are possible in this little room.

Pacing the room turns out to be simpler than he expected.

Good.

She has a private gym, and directs him to it without taking back over: through this door to the workroom, all shuttered and dark, and that's when he learns that Sith have night vision, and then through a further door to a room with floor and walls of padding, stormy-grey swirled lightly with black, and a grid of metal bars, sturdy enough to hang from, suspended from the ceiling; a rack of equipment and some sort of computer terminal are set into the side wall.

He resists the urge to try to climb the walls and heads for the terminal.

Sparring droid controls.

Hmm. Maybe not that yet.

Time to look over the rack.

Free weights, a few practice swords, a set of metal rings on cords that she identifies as attaching to the overhead grid for acrobatics practice.

He reaches down–and something about the swords calls to him, but he takes the rings anyway.

(It's like with the sign language. They'd have to blend too much, for him to call on that knowledge. He has to be careful.)

It clips straightforwardly onto the frame, but that's far enough overhead that she can't just reach it; he'll have to jump up and cling one-handed while he clips it. She doesn't seem to think that there's anything challenging about it.

He jumps, expecting what he wants to happen will happen.

She boosts and stabilizes the jump with the Force; it's a bit like she's using a limb he doesn't have. Her hand smacks into the bar.

They dangle for a moment.

(He is so impressed.)

Then he reaches up to clip the ring on. Part of him expects it to be an effort to hold themselves up well enough to do it easily.

It's not. She holds them up easily; there's a sense that it'd be possible even without the support and stabilization of her telekinesis, but with it, it's practically trivial. (She is maybe showing off, just a little. This is perhaps how Sith flirt, when they're being coy about it.)

Flirting, huh?

(There’s a little doubt, a little fear at the back of his mind, but he ignores it.)

He clips the ring up and lets go, trusting that they’ll land well.

She takes back over and lands neatly, and then goes and sits against the wall.

You okay? She echoes that fear back to him - it's understandable, all things considered, but it's the last thing he needs right now; is there anything she can do about it?

Oh. Right. She can feel that.

He hesitates.

it’s not about whether we can do it. we can. i know we can.

...but i should probably still show you what it is, right?

You don't have to. I can leave you alone to think about it if you want. But - she doesn't want to scare him - she's a little worried about the fact that she has - and that's easier if she knows what's going on.

He opens it up.

someone likes you because they don't know enough about you. they don't know all the parts of you that are broken or removed or too much. they will leave you behind when they realize everything that is missing. they will hate you when they realize everything that is there.

you do not deserve to leave. you do not deserve anything at all.

You're very silly, she sends, fondly, and echoes his strength back to him again: you're lovely. It doesn't matter what he's missing; the important thing is there. And her love doesn't run on deservingness anyway, but -

you deserve the space you are currently occupying,
the air in your lungs, the clothes on your back,
you deserve everything you have ever wanted
to be placed at your feet like an offering.
you deserve space, so much space,
room to manoeuvre and spread out and breathe.
if i could, i would bottle the stars for you.
if no one else will, then i will carve out a space for you,
use my own bare hands if i have to.
you deserve the space you occupy,
you deserve to occupy space, as much space
as you need, as you want, as you can,
you deserve to be comfortable. to be happy. to
have everything you have ever wanted placed at your feet.

[source]

He loves her.

And he doesn't – nobody would – deserve this place. And neither does she. And if he lets that voice keep speaking to him as if it deserves anything, they won't get anything better.

He chokes it, snuffs it out, as well as he can before he urges her body to stand.

Up she goes. More rings?

(She loves him. She loves him. She keeps sending it, little nondistracting bursts of warmth and comfort; it's important that he knows.)

More rings.

As they jump to place them, one by one, he understands her movements more and more, and feels more and more of...whatever she's doing, with the Force.

(She loves him!)

(She does! She loves him! He's so great!)

Now what? She can show him some acrobatic forms, if he wants, or they can just play around for a while.

Forms seem like they’d be useful. They probably teach them for a reason.

After that...well, fooling around is the best way to learn, isn’t it?

Mmhmm. She takes him through a couple of the basic ones, one focusing on unenhanced movement, flipping and tumbling along the rings, the other an early practice routine for Force enhancements that has them bouncing from floor to ceiling and back again. (Her memories of the forms aren't aren't reliable, exactly; if he were to ask her to lay it all out start to finish for him she clearly wouldn't be able to. But each step reminds her of the next, when she's doing them, like lines of a poem, and that's enough to carry her through.)

He tries to keep track of the movements well enough to learn something from it.

It's amazing, though, what she can do with her body (well, with her mind, as well, given the enhancements). He wonders whether he can take any of this back to himself, but even if he can't...

He'll be able to practice with her, someday. She looks forward to it, and not just because it means they'll be free.

He does too.

He can't wait to meet her.

Yeah. Yeah.

...can they hang upside-down from the rings with their feet?

(Presumably playtime has started.)

Of  course! (Hanging by the knees gives a better base for doing things like upside down curls, though. Hard to get any leverage with just your feet.)

Well, back to their knees, then! And curl up to the ceiling! And swing across the grid, never holding on with two hands at once...

(He’s having fun.)

These things are all possible! It's harder with less muscle memory to rely on, and a few times she has to steady him with careful use of the Force, but they never fall.

She doesn't tire - in fact, going by her body's clock it feels like early afternoon - but after a while the droid appears at the door. Time for bed.

...huh.

doesn't feel like it.

Yeah, that happens. She's not wrong. She drops from the ceiling and heads back toward the bedroom.

Y'wanna hang around? Shower, next.

i mean, if you're okay with it...

(He worries that he won't feel anything.)

It seems a little silly to want to hide anything now, she sends, amused, and then goes a bit more serious - but it's fine if you'd rather not, I understand. (She sends him another little burst of love.)

...better to know than not know, i guess.

(And he really does want to feel this.)

Okay. She's proud of him; she lets it show through.

The bathroom is large, done up in black-veined white and cloudy mustard-yellow marble with dark golden hardware in an elegant style. She strips, efficiently, not looking much, and then pauses before heading back to the shower cubicle; does he want to check out the mirror first, get it over with?

Yes. He does.

It's right over here; one of those three-section ones.

She's tall, about his height, and built on the slender side, but filled out impressively with muscles, with just a bit of fat padding them - enough to soften their definition, but not to hide it. Her chest and hips are modest; not androgynous enough to cause confusion, but not enough to draw attention, either. Her hair is dark brown, falling just to her shoulders in a plain style - she used to wear it longer, but she can't handle it that way any more, even with the droid to help with upkeep - and her eyes, when she makes the effort of making eye contact in the mirror, are a matching shade.

She's also sporting a collection of bruises on her torso and limbs, like she fell down a flight of stairs or was tossed around by a large animal or perhaps both in quick succession.

...she's gorgeous.

now i'll be able to recognize you when i see you.

He tries to move their hand up to her face.

Yeah.

She lets him move the hand; she's making good progress on making that a reflex.

...he moves it down her neck, over her chest, fingers trailing down lightly to splay on her stomach.

He certainly feels something.

.....oh.

She could...go... shoo the droid out of the bedroom? If he wants?

Well. If she wants. That would be good.

Or they could just...take a very long shower.

She hadn't actually thought of that, before, even with the flirting. But now that she considers it - yeah. She does want.

Well. They should get the bedroom to themselves, then.

The droid is easily shooed; the bed is nice and comfy.

They sprawl out on it, feel the fabric against their skin, squirm a little just to see how it feels.

(The bruises pressed down against the bed feel good, at least to him.)

Bruises aren't her thing, but she doesn't mind them enough to counteract them being his thing; he can feel her smiling a little at the effect.

He runs a hand over their body again, down to their thigh, taking his time with it.

Mmmmm. (She seems not just content to let him call the shots, but curious about what he'll do with the option.)

He takes his time with it, feels the shape of her with her hands, drags light fingertips over the insides of their thighs before he actually touches her properly.

She squirms and bucks and moans, quietly, under the touch. It must have been a while; she's very sensitive.

She's sensitive, and it's different, it's new. He likes it a lot.

He doesn't quite have the self-control to keep teasing after that. He bites his lip and he doesn't know whether it's in his body or hers.

Oh.

Oh.

Oh, Force, she makes the best decisions.

He definitely agrees.

(Nothing about his body matters right now. It's all hers.)

He's clumsy, but so focused, so in awe of the sensation they're feeling, that his mind makes up for it.

Mmmmmmmm.

Nothing he's doing is very new to her, but having him right there enjoying it along with her, feeling his enjoyment, his awe - she loves it. She loves him.

He loves her too.

Right when they go over the edge there's a moment when nothing but "them" exists.

It's perfect.

It is perfect.

(There's a bit of ambiguity, in the afterglow, about what's his and what's hers, but she sorts it out without even properly noticing that she's doing it: her things are hers, and belong exactly where they go; she loves him, and he should keep all his things, too, in their rightful spots.)

He lies there in a daze as she returns him to himself, piece by piece.

He would have thought that becoming himself again would be painful, but it feels more right somehow than it did before.

Of course it feels right. He's lovely. And she's right here to show him, since he has trouble seeing it.

Well, if she thinks so, there must be something to it.

It takes a while before he remembers there was supposed to be a shower.

Yeah, there was,wasn't there? That sounds nice. She stretches and pads back off to the bathroom to soak under the steam.

The hot water definitely feels good. The sensation feels more real, now, than it did before they had that moment of fusion.

That's probably a good thing. It's going to take some work, getting herself disentangled from him when this is all done - if they even want to - but for now, they need it.

It doesn't take long for her to start getting sleepy. It's been an exhausting day, and the water is so warm and cozy.

Aww.

He gets them out of the shower, once they're clean enough, dries them off and heads back to the bedroom.

He's so good.

Nightgowns are over here, and then once they have one of those on they should let the droid back in.

They dress themselves and walk to the door to open it for the droid.

C'mon in, sweet.

    Yes ma'am. She follows her back to the bed and gets the hairbrush out of the nightstand to fuss over her with.

I'm keeping the boy, she signs, when the droid is done. I hope you get along okay. I think you will.

    I'm sure it will be fine, ma'am.

...I don't want you to put up with things just because I want them. It has the feel of an old, repeated argument.

    Yes, ma'am. I'll tell you if I don't like him.

All right.

He enjoys the feeling of the hairbrush, and then the confirmation that she's keeping him(!).

He hopes the droid does like him.

She hopes that, too.

Mmm, such a cozy bed.

Very cozy.

He finds himself (themselves?) drifting off very quickly.

He doesn't even need to say love you. They both know it.

They do.

They dream together, sometimes with two bodies, sometimes with one; an admixture of beauty and violence, hope and despair.

It's the first really restful sleep he's had since he got here.

Until someone wakes him, he's out.

His meal comes first, again.

He startles awake, briefly, almost bangs his head against the wall.

It's just the droid.

Dazed, he accepts the tray, then crawls back into bed without touching the food.

It takes her a second to come fully awake, and another few to figure out what's going on.

You have to eat.

we can eat when...yours comes...

He shakes his head.

Reluctantly, he sits up and drags his tray closer to him.

Yeah, I know. But you need your strength. We don't know how long it's going to be.

...Oh. Right. He could almost forget, yesterday, what was happening.

He eats quietly.

She stays with him, snatches of poetry bubbling up in the background, never quite coalescing into verse - space, so much space... manoeuvre and spread out and breathe... use my own bare hands if i have to... everything you have ever wanted, placed at your feet.

Her food comes soon after, just as nice as dinner was; fruit-smothered crepes and peppered bacon and a yogurt parfait, with milk and juice and fancy offworld tea.

As soon as he's finished with his own food (or as much of it as he can choke down, anyway), he lets himself return to her body to taste her lavish breakfast.

She's been waiting for him, picking idly at the top layer of the parfait, and only starts eating in earnest when he's ready; again, she takes her time with it.

He appreciates it, and communicates his enjoyment of the food as thoroughly as he can.

I'm glad I can do this for you.

wish i could return the favor somehow.

It's nice to have somebody I can talk to. Not that she can't talk to the droid, but there's not a lot of complexity there, and it's hard doing it all in words, even signed ones.

same here.

i think i'd be a lot worse off by now if it weren't for that.

Yeah.

Well, I'm not going anywhere.

A loving and entirely non-verbal expression of the same.

(He is so good! She loves him so much!)

He loves her too!

(He also, incidentally, loves crepes. And bacon.)

It is some pretty excellent bacon, yeah.

Eventually, breakfast is done, and she needs to get dressed. There isn't much in the way of decisions to be made about it, though; nearly everything in her wardrobe is black, with very little variance in cut or fabric - the Sith equivalent of jeans and tee shirts, with a few dresses and other fancy things tucked away in the back.

Getting dressed is good practice, right?

He'll just...take care of that. Maybe a little slower than he needs to.

She sees what he's doing there, and finds it amusing.

(She's not expecting him to get much practice today once her master shows up; maybe a little, but he needs to be familiar with how she reacts to things before he can take over very much.)

...oh, right. That part.

want me to stay for everything?

She gives their connection a wiggle and sends him the feedback: it's not going anywhere. I can undo it, but. That's going to be an effort, if and when it happens. For now, it's much easier to let him stay than to cut him off.

The feeling of happiness and relief when he realizes they're tied together like that is...maybe misplaced, but very present.

Yeah, she's pretty happy about it too.

They are on a little bit of a deadline, though - not much of one, but she suspects she doesn't want to know what happens if she's still dithering over clothing when her master shows up.

...okay, good reason to hurry up.

He hurries up.

And then they're dressed. They have a bit of time, perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes, if he wants to read some poetry or mess around in the gym again or something while they wait.

Might as well see for himself what's in those books.

They're neatly organized; it's mostly poetry and engineering - especially lightsaber design - with smaller collections of short stories, travelogues, philosophy, and miscellaneous Sithy skills.

He picks a book of poetry at random and opens it.

“How often”, she asked me the night before
“Do you think it’s okay to fall apart?”

We live in a “break it, you pay” kind of culture

A handle falls off of
A coffee mug and suddenly- the entire thing is useless. We lean to sweep evidence beneath the rug, throw broken pieces into a paper bag and never think about them again.

The Japanese knew another way. They mended their broken vases with gold, aggrandized the sharp corners and turned shards of broken pottery into basins that hold light
Together.

But here, there’s no room for mistakes.

We give up so easily- on broken toys, snapped piano legs, on each other- and we make believe that even our tongues are bulletproof, as if we are stronger than what these fragile bones can take.

We don’t forgive our broken bowls. We don’t learn to piece them back together. We trip over our own skeletons.

And sweep them back beneath our skin; collect the splattering of our sorrows and flush them down the toilet like

Secrets. Were so ashamed of that which fumbles and falls through our fingers that we forget that

There’s another way; another way instead of going through our days buying coffee at five A.M. And fucking above the covers while rattling and spilling over, our insides bleeding from all the damn glass.

We were never taught that
By the end our lives, we didn’t have to be made of a hundred million cracks. We were never taught that we could have it differently, that we could piece ourselves back together with light,

That our bodies could burn from the inside out.

[source]

He reads it over and over again.

The light spills over inside him.

(She loves him so much.)

(She is so glad that he's okay.)

He knows that no matter how much he cracks, she'll put him back together.

And...he'll do the same for her. He promises himself that he'll learn how. (He knows she can feel it, and that means he's promising her, too.)

He is so good she loves him so much. (It's a surprise, over and over again, to be seen as someone to be taken care of, to be valued that way.)

It's a surprise to feel like he can take care of someone. Especially someone like her.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's not even a conscious decision, to go curl up under her blanket and just be, all cozy, with him; it just sort of happens.

It's a good thing to have happened. They're warm and it feels safe here and it's good.

Yeah. Mmmmm.

She can sense her master coming well before he gets to the door; she puts off getting up until the very last moment, though.

He withdraws reluctantly to watch.

Mrf.

She puts on the mask she wears around him - dull, unthinking, a little animalistic, all loose joints and slow reactions - and goes to wait by the door.

She wants to kill him; put her saber right through his chest and watch and listen as he ceases to be. It's not new; she sets it aside, same as she does every day. (He's on guard; she can feel it in him. If she attacks him, she'll die. Usually, it's a little tempting anyway, but not today, and that's a relief.) He asks something, as he sometimes does; she has no idea what, and just shrugs in response, not meeting his eyes.

He gestures for her to follow, and off they go.

He watches her master and his movements carefully.

She goes over the strategic and tactical considerations with him while they make their morning rounds - here's how he'd defend himself if she attacked like this, or like that; there's a genuine opening, but even if she won she'd be trapped, with the other apprentices between her and the spaceport (she can sense where they are, if she looks, and once he's seen her do it, he can look the same way); that looks like an opening, but he's on guard enough that he'd catch her moving to take advantage of it, and that would be bad.

They finish their morning check-in with the pair who do chemistry - they're making good progress on the durasteel treatment they're working on, seems like - and head toward his captor's workspace.

He follows her thoughts, tries to memorize weaknesses.

(The chemistry is actually sort of interesting.)

He can feel where they're going next, and he tries his hardest to listen, even though it's fuzzy and indistinct. He needs to know what it's like from the outside.

Oh, she can do that. Here, have some Force senses.

(Their best bet for getting him out is probably lightsabering through the wall between his cell and the storage room behind it; the path that doesn't involve passing through any walls takes them right through the core of this section. Also, there are a handful of other captives, mostly in worse shape than he is - she has a sense for injuries and general health, too, and what it shows ranges from worrying to horrifying.)

He’s trying to think about strategy, about ways to escape, but

we have to get them out.

We can try. She's not hopeful. Especially for that one guy; the life support machinery isn't going to be easy to move.

Life support.

He imagines himself unable to breathe, unable to function without his captor’s machinery, completely dependent and helpless, and panic closes his throat up.

If it comes to it, I can kill you before they get to me. She'll die too, but at that point, well.

(Her master notices the tension in her posture and flicks a spark of lightning at her; she flinches, growls involuntarily, but assumes a more submissive stance.)

thank you

The spark jolts him, calms his mind a little even as it makes part of him angry. He drifts and tries to listen.

She can't follow the conversation here nearly as well; the only thing she can make sense of is an exchange that seems to be about reprogramming some of the droids. Her attention drifts again, to her escape plans, one of the handful of things she's been trying hardest to retain - the guy with the life support probably is a loss, but if they're lucky or picky about where the other Sith are, and if the other captives are able to pull themselves together and move - if they'll trust her at all, to follow her - it won't be impossible, merely very risky, trying to get them all to the spaceport without attracting attention.

He doesn’t want to think about this. How much are they willing to risk their escape to help the others?

if we take them i can make them listen to me.

When he says things with enough conviction, when he believes them with enough intensity, sometimes people will believe him even if they have no reason to. And he believes she’s safe, that they can trust her. 

Okay.

(She loves him. If he needs this, she'll try.)

thank you.

He can't help but imagine what it would have been like, if she hadn't found him.

if we can't...

He thinks of the one on life support again.

(They at least deserve to choose to die.)