AU: Not Milliways continuity: The Foundry -Reprise

[last_kallig]

Ibani is at a corner booth in Milliways, examining a tactical map of the Kurost sector of the Mid-Rim, specifically the Nanth'ri system.

She's half in, half out of armor, a look worn by many commanders in many worlds and many times. A look that suggests that the Commander was either interrupted en route to sleep or has given up on it entirely.

She has a small stack of holopads set out on the table, listing various groups and their locations, most of them are crossed out. The two on top are for a Major Bessiker and the Sith Hiran Bessiker, his son.

She'd hoped she would never need to enter the Foundry again, but events have conspired against her.

Her stomach sinks as she recalls what she's fairly sure will be Major Bessiker's last message to her or to anyone, that a group of fanatical Jedi had taken the Foundry. She's checked again and again, and there is no one she can send, no one she can spare.

If she can't find an answer here, she'll be going alone into what the data tells her MUST be a trap.

(OOC: dialogue in italics is taken from/adapted from Ibani's canon.)

Comments

[last_kallig]

Ibani makes a rude hand gesture in Ben's direction, but she's amused at his comment despite herself. "Only because I was treating these two with velvet gloves," she snarks. "Time to finish this dance, I take it?"

Please let it be time to stab these karking Jedi, Ben. Please?

[acertainpov]

“If you’re done leading your dance partners around,” says Ben. He hasn’t moved, aggressively or defensively, from the door, just letting his presence be threat enough, challenging the Jedi to turn to him rather than Ibani.

“I think they’re getting sore feet.”

[last_kallig]

"Oh, very done," Ibani replies, parrying Master Ocera. "They haven't got your skill or your stamina. I shan't bother dancing with anyone else in the future." There is a definite sense of flirtation in her tone and the Force.

Master Ryan turns to attack Ben, anger beginning to rise in him. It might do him some good, if he actually knew how to USE it properly, but he's a Jedi.

Ibani hits Master Ocera with a blast of force lightning, sweeps him off his feet, then brings both lightsabers down in a deathblow.

[acertainpov]

Ryen has a lightsaber through him before he even finishes his attack, Ben having moved just enough to dodge and counter in the same movement. Ryen’s anger had broadcast his attack far too clearly.

“Which is the bigger betrayal?” He asks, as the dying Jedi glares at him. “A corrupt order or your own Padawan?”

Nevertheless, he lets the traitor feel his compassion as he fades away.

[last_kallig]

"I would say Padawan myself, I expected better than that, even from HIM."

Ibani starts poking things in the control center, trying to find what shuts off the flow of Murder droids.

"Thank you, Ben," she says, voice quieter. "They'll never know it, but my people have a future now because of you."

[acertainpov]

Unfortunately, droids and technology is where Ben’s particular expertise comes to an end. He joins her, but only in frowning, trying to figure out where to start poking.

“Thank you for giving the opportunity to send two young Jedi down the right path,” he says. “You could have cleared the station with a lot less risk to yourself,”

[last_kallig]

Ibani finds the right button combination, eventually! She fist pumps when the droid production finally stops.

"I could have," Ibani agrees. "But mercy is...important, when I can afford the cost of it." It helps to keep her off the path of being only the Monster that Korriban made of her.

"Imperial custom is to cremate the dead and give the ashes to the next of kin. I don't know what the customs are, for Jedi. It never seemed a good thing for me to ask, as a Sith."

[acertainpov]

“Cremation,” Ben says. “The ashes are unimportant, as we don’t have next of kin beyond our sibling Jedi. It’s symbolic only, the spirit has already rejoined the Force.”

He’d considered sending Kell Daree at least home with Ashara but the Padawan didn’t need that trauma.

[last_kallig]

"The station has a crematorium, most remote Imperial outposts of any size do. Things happen, after all."

The unspoken question is if Ben wants her help with, well, cremating the Jedi.

[acertainpov]

“Thank you.”

That’s a yes. He glances at Ryen and Ocara, wondering for a second if they managed any regret before the end, and nods.

If nothing else it will clear the station before it can be reused.

[last_kallig]

Ibani will help Ben move the bodies of the fallen Jedi and cremate them, a solemn task

As the last body is reduced to ash, Ibani feels a familiar presence in the Force. "Well, well, Darth Acina, coming to finish me off, give yourself a cover for this miserable situation, or both, I wonder?"

She turns to Ben, torn. "She might have something up her sleeve that I don't know about. But, this is also an opportunity to impress upon her my complete lack of tolerance for endangering the people of the Empire, the best one I'll likely get."

Ibani paces a little.

"Sith power games are unpleasant to witness, at best." There is worry in the Force at that statement. She doesn't want Ben to see that side of her, but she may not have much of a choice.

[acertainpov]

“I’ve seen many things in my time.”

Quietly, calmly. He will do whatever Ibani needs except possibly leave her.

“But if you need to face her alone I can hide.”

[last_kallig]

"Hiding would be safer for you, and give me an additional edge if she does have something unexpected planned. So long as you're out of immediate sight and your force presence is hidden she'll never know you're there."

Ibani sighs. "I'm going to have to convince her I'm the bigger, scarier monster."

She pulls a minor illusion over her armor, making the damage to it seem to vanish.

"Thank you," she says as she moves toward the hanger bay.

[acertainpov]

He nods his acceptance of the thanks and slips into the maintenance passage, where he spends a couple of seconds restoring his invisibility in the Force. With all the dropping and raising of that specific shield today it takes a bit of patience, but as he retraces his steps from earlier, no Force sensitive on the station would be aware of anyone except Darth Imperious.

[last_kallig]

Darth Acina steps out of her shuttle, her eyes the particular shade of amber that, in humans, indicates what the Jedi like to call corruption by the Dark Side. "A pity I seem to have missed all the excitement," she says as she meets Ibani's gaze.

"Oh, just a bit of housekeeping," Ibani replies, waving a hand dismissively. "I do hate cleaning up other people's messes, but needs must." There is challenge in Ibani's gaze and Acina bristles at it.

"Whatever are you implying about your Empress, Darth Imperious?"

Ibani's tone takes on the feeling of an experienced worker disappointed in a junior colleague and the Force echoes that. "Oh, Acina, I'm so terribly disappointed in you. An Empress ought to have a better grasp of how the Game is played."

The two of them are side by side now. "Did you really think I wouldn't notice your little stunt here, Acina?" Ibani adds, still in that disappointed tone.

"You insolent..." Darth Acina snarls, her anger flaring, but then Acina freezes in place, and her heart jumps, skips. There is a spike of fear in the Force from Acina.

"So many little things in the body depend on tiny electrical charges operating in just the right way," Ibani explains. "The skeletal muscles, for example, and the heart."

[acertainpov]

Ben has taken a seat in the maintenance passageway, just by the hangar, his presence now invisible and his mind free to focus, to listen to the Force as it flows through and around him and the two Sith.

When things start happening that he'd have an emotional reaction to, were he not a Jedi, he lets that emotion dissipate and focuses instead on what he can sense, observe.

He'd forgotten Ibani's particular skill, her fine point accuracy that even Vader, with his unbridled power and Yoda, with his cenuturies of study, couldn't get close to, and he chooses to watch that, to study her technique, rather than to react to her use of it.

[last_kallig]

The technique requires the Dark side, as it involves Force lightning on the most microscopic of scales, the tiniest of threads weaving into Darth Acina's body, wrapping themselves around her skeletal muscles and her heart. Ibani has a healer's knowledge, the experience of someone who has put their own body back together with the Force times beyond counting, and she is exploiting that to make this terrifying effect.

Acina's power thrashes, struggles, against Ibani's technique, tearing her own tissue.

"Shhh, don't struggle," Ibani says, as she cups Acina's cheek with one hand. "You'll tear your own heart out and that would be terribly messy, don't you think?" Her tone is conversational still, a jarring contrast to what her power is doing.

"A little ambition is a fine thing, Acina, but you endangered ALL the Sith, ALL the Empire with your little stunt here. And THAT, that I will not tolerate." Ibani's tone turns dark, serious.

[acertainpov]

The pain is intense, a roar in the Force, which Ben lets flow over him, resisting the temptation to eas it even a little. It's years of practice just at being inactive, at listening without reacting, at accepting without endorsing.

He knows what it must take for Ibani to show this side of herself to him, and while he knows that much of it is an act for Acina's sake, he can also sense the part that isn't, the part he doesn't expect she'd ever choose for him to see.

He wishes he could remove himself from her thoughts as easily as from her senses.

[last_kallig]

Ibani is thinking about Ben, even now. That he will know her for the monster she is when this is over, see what Korriban made of her.

She doesn't know if her heart can take losing his friendship and there is fear and sorrow in her at that that Acina won't feel, but Ben might.

"What are you going to do, kill me? Acina snarls, angry, defiant and terrified.

"Kill you? Certainly not." Ibani chuckles, as if amused. "No child of Korriban is afraid of death, as we both know."

The Dark side swells around Ibani, becoming physically tangible like the hot breath of a hungry beast on a chain on the skin even at Ben's distance from Ibani. "No, my dear. Endanger the Empire with your ambitions again and I will cage you in your own flesh, unable to act in any way but horribly, terribly AWARE."

"How long do you think it would take for your mind to turn on itself like a serpent devouring its tail, Acina? How long would it take before you'd BEG me to allow you to die, after that, hm?"

[acertainpov]

A few years ago, General Obi-Wan would step in by now, would try to prevent his friend from going down this path, to protect her from the Dark Side or even to save the Empress from some of the pain.

He breathes, slowly and deeply, and rides the fear, the sorrow, the attachment to his esteem. Some of this, at least, he take in, sit with, let flow out again slightly less than it was. Not enough that Ibani would notice, but he doubts either of them are paying attention to anything but their own confrontation right at this moment.

He knows what she is, has always known. He's prepared to see it, and refuses to deny his reaction. He'll just have to actually feel it later.

[last_kallig]

"Do we understand each other?" Ibani asks Acina.

"Perfectly," Acina snarls back.

The Dark vanishes, as if it was never there, and Ibani lets go of the power holding Acina.

"Capital, I'm so glad we could resolve this little misunderstanding, aren't you?"

"Many things have been made clear, yes," Acina replies. The fear is there still, and the hatred, but Acina has damped it down, is regaining control of herself. "Since the situation seems to have been resolved, I shall leave matters in your capable hands."

Ibani bows slightly. "As you wish, Empress Acina." She does not take her eyes off of Acina until the Empress' shuttle is gone.

Then, she lets the illusion covering her armor go, takes off her helmet. She can just be Ibani now, for whatever that's worth.

She can't quite conceal her heartache from Ben she speaks. "I am sorry you had to see the monster Korriban made of me, Ben. For several reasons."

[acertainpov]

From behind, Ben places a hand on her shoulder - he's taken his glove off, in fact and it's his bare hand that rests on her tattered armor.

He says nothing about her regret, nothing about her actions, nothing about her threats or willingness to follow through on them. But nor does he offer compassion, reassurance, or love through the Force. It's just him, and he's there, in the physical sense.

"Is there anything still to do?"

[last_kallig]

She aches for Ben's force presence, wishes she could know how he feels after, well, everything.

She's not sure how to read his touch, his bare hand on her armor. She yanks the gauntlet off her right hand, reaches up to gently touch his face.

"No, we're done here. Hopefully for good this time." She smiles at him, but it's a sad smile. "Thank you, Ben, for everything, for what it's worth."

The sorrow in her heart is a great and terrible thing. She doesn't MEAN for him to see it, but she doesn't expect he'll ever want to see her again, after this.

[acertainpov]

He leans his cheek into her palm, lets his beard come to the heel of her hand, and closes his eyes just for a second.

He doesn't know how to tell her what he feels - wouldn't be able to tell her even if he wasn't hiding, because even then, for twenty or so years as a Jedi, he was so used to lying through the Force about what he was or wasn't feeling, he'd never be able to give her what she craves.

And now he's done with the lies, but his need to hide overrides everything else.

No one touches him like this anymore. No one touches him physically at all, really. Haven't for a long time.

His lips part as he breathes through his mouth, and he wonders how he's going to get through this without hurting her.

[last_kallig]

She should let go, should take her hand away from his cheek, but she can't.

For Ibani, romantic love and sexual desire are both flowers that have only ever bloomed a handful of times in her life. Always together and always with friends she's had for years. The feelings have never been mutual, so she never said anything to them, what would have been the point?

But Ben is hard to read, always has been. And, well, she needs to know if he's even a FRIEND anymore.

"You're a hard man to read, Ben," she says quietly. "You could hate me, and I'm not sure you'd ever let it show."