[closed]

[erbier]

CHARACTERS: Ilde, Mara, Batman
WHERE: Concordia
WHEN: DAY 33
SUMMARY: This is a training montage
WARNINGS: There's some violence and a tad bit of gore.

She has to go digging in Angel's clothes for 'athletic' wear. It is not a term Ilde particularly understands or even agrees with, but it seems that it would be best to follow Mara's instructions, for the time being. Still, any fight she gets in to... she is likely to be wearing a dress, why not practice in one? She only grumbles a little as she pulls into one of Angel's pairs of stretchy leggings with its panels of mesh. She pokes around for a shirt as well, but finds it more difficult to find a fit. She finally determines something that will have to do and goes to meet Mara on the rooftop. The rooftop of their building was the best compromise to be found. Perhaps somewhere isolated in the industrial district, but then it would have been the pair of them isolated on the far side of the industrial district. If something went wrong it could be troublesome. Besides, others have already used the rooftop for their fights. She's already had to move some of the plants into safer locations.

It's her turn. She is not so much nervous as excited. She has never had anyone like Mara in her life. There had rarely been other women, at all, once she began to live in the palace.

Even fewer, after Camille had been found a witch.

The blast of cool air as she comes out onto the roof removes that thought from her. It also catches her hair and blinds her for a moment as she moves to take control of all the long blonde locks and tie them up. She uses the same bit of twine she's always used to knot off the end of the braid.

Comments

[erbier]

Ilde is silent as Mara explains this to her, mulling over the various Force users that she knows. They each feel so different. Anakin, Ahsoka, Ren, Rey, and now Mara. How did they all come together? Some of them were clearly not Jedi. In fact, Ahsoka had vehemently told her that she herself had left the order, and yet she still espoused the desire to keep the peace. To help those in need. Supposedly something she had learned from Anakin, although Ilde had never heard such a sentiment from the man himself. It is certainly nothing she has ever heard from Kylo Ren. One piece does ring with familiarity however: They became corrupt, and that's why their way of life fell into disrepair. Their peace was a lie, and they feared true passion and strength.

"They come from different times," Ilde decides to explain. "I do not know all of the history, but Ren knew Anakin, when Anakin had no inkling of him."

That's as far as she is willing to talk about that, it isn't her story to share.

[snaphiss]

"That sounds like the sort of scrapes Jedi get into. I don't know why, but they always end up in the most impossible situations." Mara says with a shrug. It's completely unlike her problems, which are totally orderly and sensible and logical, always, without fail.

"One Jedi I knew was cloned against his will," she says, taking care to keep his involvement in this anonymous. She doubts Skywalker's squeaky clean reputation would improve from association with her, and while he isn't here to take that blow, the principle is all that matters for a friend. "He was forced to fight the clone, and couldn't kill it-- killing your own clone will drive you mad. So I did it for him."

You will kill Luke Skywalker. She smiles, sly and proud.

[erbier]

"Cloned...?" She frowns, mulling that concept over.

She understands the meaning of the word to 'clone' but the overall concept is very strange to her. The imagery that comes to mind is disturbing. Flesh grown in vats, some kind of nightmare. How could such things even be considered human. Her ultimately superstitious nature dismisses the idea as a disgusting one. She doesn't even question why killing it might drive you mad, of course it would: like stabbing a blade into your own heart.

"As the Hive travels, I think we too will encounter many an impossibility." Ilde herself has already encountered much she thought impossible, has been forced to give up the religion that guided her entire life and rethink all she has ever known. Then again, coming from somewhere so backwards primitive perhaps she had more to learn than most.

[snaphiss]

"We already have," Mara says, thinking on it. She's been shepherded off to some distant corner of the Unknown Regions, farther than she's ever been in what felt like less than an eyeblink, and yet...

"But it's strange, this planet only reminds me of..." home isn't the right word. "Coruscant. The capital of the New Republic and the Jedi Order." She expects the words to be meaningless to Ilde. "I guess impossible is relative."

It's a sobering thought. She's not looking forward to seeing whatever both of them find awe-inspiring. Mara stands, and begins doing some basic stretches to get her mind off it.

[erbier]

Ilde plucks at the knee of the leggings she wears, running her fingers over the texture of the mesh panels. She's trying to imagine this shape Mara is talking about: the New Republic, the Jedi Order. They both have this sense about them that they sprawl over planets. Even here in Condordia, Ilde has very little understanding of an ecosystem that spans her immediate physical world. Even her visualization of the Station and Avera in relationship to Opia is... childish, simple. Toys that sit in their designated places in a sea of black. She feels a little small and silly in that moment, trying to follow along in a conversation she clearly did not understand.

"It has been frightening," she is sure that won't win her any sympathy from Mara Jade, but it's the truth. "Nothing is the way I thought it was. I did not realize how much my sense of security was built merely in familiarity."

[snaphiss]

That thought resonates deeply with Mara, more deeply than she was expecting. Familiarity, security, identity, pride. When it leaves you, everything changes. Mara remembers the explosion, fainting, the pain. She remembers waking up in an Imperial prison, and the bleakness of knowing everything about who she was... was over.

A bit of this fizzes over the mental link, a sense of loss and confusion. Mara feels it slip away, knows a tiny bit of her secret is out.

She mutters, "how old are you?"

[erbier]

That thrumming is no surprise to Ilde, they knew there was something between one to the other, it had been there from the beginning, when she had first heard the heavy voice of a dark man that lived inside of Mara's mind. They already know this, and so she makes no attempt to grab hold of the thread of it, more like it is a butterfly and she lets it ghost her hand and lets it leave her again.

"Twenty."

She may not be. Her parents had died when she was very small, there was no one who entirely knew her age. Maybe she was a little older, maybe she was even a little younger. Twenty is the number that she uses, however, it fits her place in the world, not quite a child, not quite a woman. It was the way of things, the way she had intended to die; to keep pristine.

[snaphiss]

"I was... twenty-two, when my familiarity with the world I knew ended." She looks away from Ilde, choosing to focus on the skyline instead. She was on a world like this one, Coruscant, and she was a completely different person from who she is now. The wound, years old, remains fresh.

"Maybe it always happens around that age."

[erbier]

What a strange and curious thought.

"I expected to die, he told me that I would... that I would be beautiful and pure, unlike all the others," she almost says more, but it gets the point across, she moves on, "Sometimes I wonder if perhaps I earned this new life. It would be... reassuring. To know I was doing what was right."

Just as Mara stares off at the skyline, Ilde stares down into her hands.

"But he has no power over this. He was a vast and terrifying prodigy, but no God. I am here because... my body can hold this parasite."

And no other reason, as far as she can tell. How hollow that can feel.

[snaphiss]

Mara considers the idea of purity just as strange as anything Ilde's said. She never considered it important, beyond a chemical component, or an element in careful breeding. How a human can be pure, she doesn't know. How a man can be a god, she wishes she didn't.

No, that isn't true. But she almost wishes it was.

"You're here because someone decided to kidnap you." Mara mutters, to herself as much as Ilde. "What you do next is up to you. Danger is just what the weak call opportunity."

[erbier]

That startles a bitter, twisted little smile out of Ilde, her round nose wrinkled for a moment. It's almost like a spasm against her will, but she likes the way that Mara has put that. Ilde has her own opinions about the weak, and her desires for power and control against her sense of powerlessness make it a double edged sword tipped with poison that she cuts herself upon again and again.

"I see."

Sees and agrees.