Symmetry and Imperfection

Part 10

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The feeling of absolute clarity was startling. The colors, scents, and sounds of Jilla's Tap and Table swirled around the deep stillness within Abhaia and vanished into its event horizon. Something within her cried out in horror and grief, then in loss and rage.

Patrons who had been knocked off their feet were moving for the door, vanishing into the falling night, fleeing the woman with eyes as blue and cold as the deepest glacier ice. There were whispers of "Jedi" and "Sith," made only once far from the Tap and even then with a hasty look over the shoulder.

Within the now emptied bar, Abhaia held her prisoner in place by refusing to let his legs receive the nerve impulses from his brain.

He was broad-shouldered, heroically muscular, and tall enough that Abhaia could walk under his outstretched arm with out disordering a hair on her head. Right now, he was sweating, literally stinking of fear as she closed the scant distance between them.

"It's not a good idea to resist me, so you might as well quit. Melenk and Karris didn't come out of it too well, if you've not heard already." She cocked her head to one side and looked up at him with eyes and cheeks red from crying, " I know you. Uthor, is it?"

He made no answer.

"I seem to remember you as an instigator, never an initiator. Someone who always slipped away when things got rough." Abhaia's lips skinned back from her teeth in something that was not a smile, but a predator preparing to bite.

Stepping back, she raked him with her eyes, noting his left hand clenched hard enough to whiten the knuckles. Extending a tendril of the Force, she jolted the nerves in the arm, compelling the hand to open.

Something the size of a comlink dropped to the floor. Abhaia called it to her hand and studied it. "A remote control. Now you have become such cowards that you cannot kill face to face?"

Uthor swallowed audibly at the heat in her voice. "She didn't say what she was told to say, she'd be breathing now if she had."

Abhaia's eyes flashed, her face tightening with fury. "Do I look like a fool?" she spat. "Or do you just think that after a lifetime of lies that I can't see truth when it runs up and bites me? You don't put an detonator in a person who you intend to keep alive past a certain point."

"Your grandfather ordered...."

"Killing Neve was intended to hurt me. She was to deliver your message, then be killed just to make the point of how powerful you are!" Rage was filling her voice, lowering it until it was a musical growl. "Just to let me know that you can do what you wish, when you wish, as if I never had to clean up the aftermath of your arrogance!"

The last word was shouted an inch from the tip of Uthor's nose.

"Abi... Healer," Uthor licked the sweat from his upper lip, his voice as smooth as warm oil. "I... see now that this has been mishandled. I can go to Perran, tell him how powerful you are..."

Abhaia cut of the unctuous flow with a flip of her hand that slammed his jaw shut and shattered a molar.

"Mishandled? The entire bloody delusion of Perran Jasc was mishandled the day that he came to Lu'xiri and talked my parents into going with him to Illoni! He stole my father's mind, killed my family and now, now you think things might have been flaming mishandled!" Fury roared within her now, burning up the last shreds of reason and restraint, consuming everything and leaving only the molten desire to inflict the pain that had been visited upon her.

But you were the one who committed patricide, Abi. Nobody made you swing that blade.

Something dark filled her, augmenting her powers, and when she looked at her captive again her eyes were onyx black.

Uthor's body seemed to compress, muscles jumping in galvanic spasms. In time, the movements were powerful enough to snap him back and forth like a whip. Mouth open in a silent scream, the only sound that came from him was the sound of breaking bones.

"How does it feel? You can't stop me, reason with me, bribe me, or even plead with me. Did Neve plead with you? Beg you not to put that thing in her chest? Did she beg for her life?" Tears were running down Abhaia's face, emotions roaring like an avalanche through her body and soul. "Do you like being helpless? Do you like the fear, and the pain? Or do you hate me as much as I hate you and just wish that the hurt would stop?"

The seizures racking Uthor's body stopped and Abhaia regarded him for a moment, reading his emotions.

"Wish granted."

Uthor's head twisted sharply. There was a muted double popping sound and his head and neck moved in a boneless roll. Slowly, his muscles lost memory of life and he slumped to the floor.

Abhaia stood for a moment, then slowly collapsed to her knees, so drained that she felt a strong breeze might blow her away like the ashes of a spent fire. The clear blue of her eyes emerged from the overwhelming blackness and she seemed to sag on her very bones, as if the cost of the power she wielded was too much for her body to bear for long.

She did not know how long she sat there before a subtle alteration in the breeze blowing through the windows of the now empty café, made her open her eyes. A man in a hooded robe stood there and the signature of the Other encountered in her mediation filled her Force-sense. He went to his knees, pulling back his hood, revealing warm golden-brown eyes that regarded her with horror and pity, even as he held out his hand to her.

When he spoke, his voice was so etched with compassion that she nearly lurched to her feet and ran. "Abi. Oh, child, I am so terribly sorry..."

~