Sympathy

Mishori looked down at the body of the other Deshade as the lightnings flickered and died in her hands, then up at Khem Val. Adronikos believed that Khem could only scowl, but she had been working with the Deshade—her Deshade—for weeks, and she was better able to read him now. He had thought this other one to be a friend, someone from his life that had managed to survive.

And now that friend, that former ally was dead because they had not been friends at all.

"...I'm sorry," she offered quietly.

What pain there had been in Khem's face fled with the advent of a scowl.

"Bad enough that I discover this, but do not subject me to your pity, little Sith," he growled.

Tired of Tatooine, overheated from use of lightning on an already hot planet, Mishori abruptly lost patience. She reached out and smacked Khem's arm; it wasn't a hard smack, but it was startling, as it was maybe the second time she'd actually hit him.

"It's called sympathy, not pity, you ass," she snapped as he stared at her in surprise. "Don't go thinking you've got the market cornered on being betrayed, being forced to kill someone you don't want to!"

"It is a Sith's pleasure to do this," he retorted in his blunt fashion.

"I never wanted to be Sith!" Mishori cried, purple lightning dancing around her arms. "I didn't even want to be Jedi, I just wanted to be left alone! But no! The Jedi took me from Nar Shaddaa without a chance to say goodbye, and then the Sith took me from the Jedi and turned me into a child-slave! And then they threw me on Korriban, and now I'm working for a deranged Master, I have a Force Ghost who thinks he's my damned ancestor—A Cathar rising to ranks among the Sith? I'm lucky to be alive, damnti—and I never asked for any of this!"

Khem stared at her in mute surprise, and Mishori couldn't really blame him; cutting sarcasm was her usual tongue of choice, not brutal honesty. But she was tired of being on Tatooine, tired of being treated like the slave she had once been. If she'd had the credits, she would have bought herself a smaller ship, gone back to Nar Shaddaa, and already been looking for her missing sisters, not mucking about with whatever equipment Zash needed for a ritual that Mishori was certain was going to kill her.

Because Khem was right; death was what Sith were.

Mishori turned away from the bodies, from him, mentally reciting a code that was neither Sith, nor Jedi; she had stumbled upon it when she had done the work of becoming a Revanite. It ordained that the Force was a thing, a tool, and it was the user who made of it what they willed. Neither Jedi nor Sith, Revan had ended up being something different at the end, and it was this difference that Mishori hoped to achieve as well.

She didn't want to be a Sith. She didn't want to be a Jedi. But she had this power, and damned if she wasn't going to use it to do what she could. Sometimes, the only thing she could do was defend herself. Sometimes, she had to fight. And she knew that Khem regarded her refusal to properly utilize the power as a weakness, but she also found herself wondering if maybe he didn't respect her for it... just a little.

Slowly, the lightning faded, and the energy both within and without calmed. She was who and what she was, damnit, and whether it had been the Force, or just plain shitty luck, she had to work with the hand she was currently given. Sith, Jedi, somewhere in between, didn't matter. It was what it was, and she could only slightly modulate the outcome.

But damned if she wouldn't manipulate that to the best of her own limited abilities.

When she was calm again, she glanced back at Khem, who had waited with a surprising amount of patience.

"Is that it then?" she asked, voice steady again.

"Yes. If it pleases my master, we may leave and never speak of these ghosts again."

Mishori nodded, and pulled her hood up against the harsh suns of Taootine as they headed back out into the desert.