I knew better than most that the temper of a Sith was rarely ever unleashed on others. There were threats, dark rumors, was mumbling between officers, that Sith were no joke. That they meant business. However, it wasn't very often that my temper got the better of me. It was mere rumor alone that allowed me to talk as I did, behave the way I did.
In fact, in all the time that I'd been a Sith, for what little that was worth, perhaps four years now since I'd left the Academy with Vette, I'd only really unleashed my temper once. And that, unfortunately, was on the man who'd had the audacity to violate my body while I was incapable of fighting back.
And even then, that rage wasn't even mine. Admittedly, the notion that his death was satisfying was overwhelming and couldn't be denied from time to time. The thought flirted with my conscious mind, and I I felt shame that sometimes I wanted to revel in it. Often, very often, sometimes multiple times a day, I remembered one of Quinn's softest and most treasured gem of wisdom: the difference between a sane Sith and one like me was that I kept my wits about me. I had to.
But, right then, before Pierce, in a large, echoing room in which we just breathed, I felt it slipping away, that meticulous control, and for the first time in a long time, I didn't really care.
Quinn might be lost to me, I realized.
The physical culmination of all that meant overwhelmed me, and what little light I knew I had inside of me, which came out in the acts of mercy, kindness, laughter, and smiles on a day to day basis, lay forgotten in the back of my mind. Instead, in their place was the rage that I'd done the wrong thing, the bitterness that I had not seen what was so obvious to everybody else, and the fury at the one man who now seemed like a poisonous obstacle who'd done nothing but get in my head and get in the way.
The fear that he was gone forever.
I turned towards Pierce, and his eyes said it all. They widened, though only slightly, and the scruff of a recently shaven beard made him look young and boyish in a way he never had. Good. Very good.
He deserved to be afraid. Deserved every blow Quinn threw at him.
Part of me knew this wasn't Pierce's fault.
Part of me didn't care.
"Lieutenant," I breathed, unable to really do so, my chest heaving. "Why were you fighting with Quinn this time?"
"I told him I was going on your ship, and then I wanted to know about your deep and dark secret, m'lord."
So casual. So fearless.
I'd change that.
"YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO ME, HUH?" I shrieked, my voice rising in decibels I'd never remembered reaching. "IS THAT WHY YOU HIT MY CAPTAIN? BECAUSE IF YOU HIT HIM, YOU HIT ME!"
Electricity shot through the tendrils of my hands as my muscles there clenched and tingled with the raw Force energy that began to inundate me. I squeezed my hands, and I felt my eyes widen maniacally. Laughter rose out of me, but it was bitter, awful laughter, the sound I'd heard out through Baras' mask so many times. The building of this monster inside of me didn't stop now, and I wouldn't stop it. The crackling of lightning forged a wall of energy around my person, and I spread my arms wide into the sky as lightning formed all around us, flinging this way and that as sparks loud enough to deafen snapped against metallic walls of metal and plastic. The singing of my environment only enhanced my foul mood, and I began to roil in my own wickedness.
I felt the insanity for the first time on my own terms.
It was there, waiting to come out. I just had to let it.
And let it, I did.
I thought of my father, who'd always rejected me. My father, who'd spat on me, beaten me, ripped me from my family like a ragdoll and threatened to rape my mother and sisters if I didn't do what he said. I thought of my mother, who wouldn't recognize the slutty daughter she had now, the daughter who cared so much for the opinions of the way others saw her. The mother who would spit on her, would reject her, just like everybody else.
I thought of Vette, of the little girl I'd brought up from nothing, of the girl who'd just thoroughly emasculated me, punched me where I was down, who'd snuck up behind me and shanked me in the lungs with knives that wounded deeply. I thought of her words, of the things she'd said. She knew I'd loved Quinn. Had known it for some time. It never needed to be said to be known, girls were like that, but the tearing of this feeling from me, only to dash it to the ground with the harsh reality that was truth, caused something close to insanity to brim to the tip of my cup.
I thought of Quinn, who'd always been there for me. Quinn, the protector. Quinn, the joker. Quinn, the caregiver. Quinn, the strategist, the viciously calculated man who'd gone from a walking calculator to a man with feelings that I now recognized as deep and sensitive. He was a profoundly sensitive person, and I'd wounded him - I saw it now. Over and over and over again, I'd wounded him.
As if in sequence, I could just see all the times I'd flung myself against him, thinking I wasn't worthy because I was an alien, thinking I wasn't pretty enough, not smart enough, not the right woman, the normal woman, that he deserved. Excuses. All dirty, stupid lies!
He'd never once taken advantage of me, and I'd given him more than enough opportunities to do so. It was my time in slavery that did it, I thought. Conditioned behavior was almost impossible to unlearn, and I was sickened and shamed that I'd harshly judged him for not making a move, all while confiding in him that I was tired of being looked at, tired of being abused and seen as an alien with breasts and wide hips, tired of being seen as a number, a scary Sith Lord who meant nothing but the advancement of one's career. By the gods, we'd even talked about it.
I'd expected him to act, all while suggesting to him that if he did so I would very likely oust him forever.
And this resistance was telling. I'd kissed him twice, only twice, and by the Maker, I'd dreamt and dreamt of doing more with him on countless nights of longing, aching for him to see me the way I wished that he would, as a woman, as an equal, as a person.
He was restraining himself for my benefit, not his own.
Tears built behind my eyelids as I bent my neck back and let out a howl that would have made shyracks seem quiet, and the room filled with the noise as the bitterness and the rage escaped my body in waves of agony. It hurt, I realized, and the shrieks weren't just of power. My little body was too small to handle so much power so quickly, and the exhaustion of this was building. It would overcome me soon, and I knew I would be done for.
I didn't care. It had to get out. I had to get it out. I had to shriek. I had to destroy, to hurt things, to make it go away. The thought that Quinn was now lost just wouldn't seem to go away. Vette's shouts still rang in my ears, and I had never felt so desolate, so alone, in my entire life.
I was ready to die if I never had to feel it again.
Dimly, far, far off, I heard Pierce whisper to me, gentler than he ever had. A broken, whispered apology.
Not enough.
Not nearly enough.
"FINE!" I shrieked at him. "You want to know what happened to me so badly? Fine!"
"My lord, I didn't mean -"
"No, no, please, I wouldn't want you to restrain yourself for my benefit! Since it is obviously so important to you that you figure out my little secret, I might as well just tell it to you, right?"
"Rowak, please, I -"
"A while back," I plowed over him, my voice vacillating with rage, "I was taken away by a one Darth Baras - my master - where I was brought to a torture facility meant for Jedi and traitors! There, I was raped and beaten for being alive, Pierce, before I lost my temper and found the man who did it!"
The words, as nasty and terrible as they were inside of my head, were even more terrible out loud, and the great and terrible laughter became more real as my nostrils flared with my ultimate rage.
I couldn't even really see. I felt sick to my stomach, weary, but I wouldn't yield to it. Like a sprint to the finish, I felt the lightning in my hands grow as it crackled in the air around my body, as I sucked in the power with every failing breath, and the laughter became even more sickening.
"Then, you know what? When I found that man, I followed him back to his house and I killed his wife and son - a four year old boy! Murdered them in cold blood! I'm a murderer!"
The word caused those mounting tears to fall, and once more I heard the lightning around us crack. All at once, I felt moisture on my head, and I realized that the roof was covered in singed holes. I'd blown open the structure and now the rain from the outside was pouring down on top of us.
And again, as the laughter turned into sobs, from far off, I saw Pierce's face change.
"That's why you don't like killing people..." I heard him mutter.
"Then, I brought that man's body, struggling and wheezing, back to my master in the Dark Council and I ripped his head off in front of them like the garbage he was!"
I turned from him, suddenly, feeling small, feeling exposed. I didn't want Pierce to see me differently.
I couldn't, wouldn't, lose anybody else.
My knees collided all at once with the floor, and I felt the laughter die completely as sobs overtook me. I couldn't do this anymore, couldn't pretend. I loved Quinn.
Quinn loved me.
And now it was all ruined, all done for.
There was no hope.
There is always hope, Master, a familiar calming voice whispered into my head.
Like a balm to a stinging, venomous rash, a coolness entered my head, and I inhaled for the first time in what felt like an eternity.
But Vette and Quinn both hate me, I argued internally, feeling the meat of my palms collide against the metal floor.
They could never hate you, Master, Jaesa told me.
Time passed, and something was happening. The cool built inside of me, balm to the rage, and I felt the wall of control begin to remount itself against the power that threatened to consume me everyday. The admissions that had just emerged were terrifying and had to be addressed, but that was okay.
Jaesa was there.
When I became aware again, my arm was around Jaesa's shoulder. I was weak, my knees buckled, and moving hurt. She was walking me back to the ship, I realized after a while, but looking around made my stomach hurt with dizziness. The sound of her voice was constant and calming. She was reciting Jedi proverbs to me, and I realized that maybe there was something to that Jedi bantha-shit after all.
When another moment of clarity came again, I was in a bed in the medical wing of our ship. She was sitting on my bed, tending to my wounds with the Force. Vibrations in the air that only Force users would be able to feel calmed my bleeding palms, and I felt the weakness begin to force me into a restless slumber.
I managed to talk though, albeit briefly, before sleep took me.
"Pierce?" I managed, hardly able to move my lips.
"He's here," Jaesa whispered to me soothingly. "He's not angry. None of us are. We love you."
I felt my lip tremble like a baby.
"I'm sorry," I whispered to her.
"I know, Master," she told me. "But there's nothing to be sorry for. We work together, we help each other. It is the way of the Light, the way you've shown me. Don't give up hope now. As bad as things might seem now, nothing will ever seem as bleak after a good, long sleep. So get some rest. I'll watch over you for a while."
Grateful beyond what I would ever be able to say, I closed my eyes obediently, and dreamed of Quinn.
