two!

[tobeajedi]

Who: Vima and OPEN
Broadcast: n/a
Action: The Iskaulit
When: August 20th

[Vima is venturing on to the Iskaulit for the first time. It's been there for as long as she's been in the Fleet, but she's avoided it except when someone else on her ship has wanted to plot a course there.

Now she's taking a step inside. She still wonders if she ought to, but so many other people didn't have the luxury of keeping away. And if she's a Jedi, she can't hide from it because she's scared of how it feels.

But how it feels is horrible. The agony and the hostility and the death still coats the inside like a noxious film, thicker in some places than in others. She's not looking at all like her usual, upbeat self as she makes her way around. The idea of people using this place for recreation seems to her like putting a cantina in a graveyard.]

Comments

[tothefly]

[It still feels weird, being on this ship without the chance of a sudden flood of rabid crab people charging around a corner hellbent on destruction. Weird being in these halls, seeing everything clean and more or less repaired, seeing next to no trace of the original occupants. Strange hearing the echo of human (or humanish) laughter echoing.

Maybe that makes it more important that someone remembers what happened here, and from the look of it, this one does. Natasha is careful to make sure her footsteps make a sound as she comes up behind the young redhead, left arm in a sling against her chest.]

It's a little uncanny, isn't it?

[tobeajedi]

[Vima is grateful for that because she probably would have jumped if Natasha had come up quietly. She takes note of the sling]

Yeah, it's--I mean, I wasn't in the fighting myself, but the echoes of it are still here.

[tothefly]

Part of your training, hearing that sort of echo?

[Natasha can admit to curiosity, even now. Vima may not have been there, but she was. Fought for her life, here, or at least a limb. It's not the sort of thing you forget, especially if you're like her. Keeping a count of the dead.]

[tobeajedi]

[She shakes her head.]

I'd feel it with or without training... that's what the Force does. It connects life. When there's a lot of death--sudden or so much--you sense the wrongness.

[tothefly]

There was definitely a lot of death here. And a lot of wrong. I'm not really surprised.

Is there any way to get rid of it?

[Not that she thinks they should. Hiding death, pretending it never happened...it's not her style, anymore. Even if they don't find the bodies, she always remembers. She keeps count.]

[tobeajedi]

[Get rid of the Force... it's not a surprise that Natasha would want to know if there's an off switch. After all, you can turn the telekinesis on and off, and the Battle Meditation.

But the Force itself? Well, there is a way, and her mother did it once as a judgment on the man who would become Vima's master.]

No--the Force is the Force. You just have to learn how to cope with it, I think.

[Really, how does her mom deal with traveling old battlefields and disaster areas? Vima wishes she'd thought to ask.]

[tothefly]

[That's good info to have, but not exactly what she was referring to. But it's an easy mistake to make, as vague as she's being. She's distracted. It's still weird hearing sounds in these halls that aren't gunshots and screams, inhuman squeals.]

I meant the echoes. The sense of death. Does it just fade over time, or can you--wash it clean, I guess?

[tobeajedi]

Oh. [Now... that's a question Vima isn't entirely sure the answer to.] Mm... I think it depends on how bad it was. There are places that are just dark, no matter what. But I think on this ship, it will probably fade over time. [It's not like a planet's worth of death.] And if there's enough--life and good, I guess, it would return the balance. I'm not sure how to put it into words.

[tothefly]

[Moment of silence for Alderaan Natasha wonders if it gets any less vague than 'maybe enough good balances the bad.' After a minute, she shrugs. It's always been a good enough answer for her.]

Seems straightforward enough to me. Equivalent exchange. Death is debt. You repay it with life.

[tobeajedi]

[Vima considers that and compares it to Ulic Qel-Droma. He was responsible for hundreds, thousands of deaths. But before that, he'd been a Jedi who saved many lives, and after that, her master. She nods.]

I don't know that most Jedi would say it like that, but it's not a bad way to think of it. You can't make it so the dark things have never happened, but you can change it going forward.

[pompous_today]

[Simon had taken Dr. Keller's idea of converting a few rooms on the ship into clinic spaces to heart, and had taken it upon himself to go and look for good locations.

However, though he didn't have any powers of empathy like his sister, he still felt like the atmosphere of the place hadn't changed, like the ghosts of the dead creatures were still flitting around.

Thankfully, he wasn't the only one who seemed troubled.]

... It's hard to make it go away, isn't it? That awful... heaviness, I suppose I'd call it.

[tobeajedi]

[Oh hey, it's Simon. Vima smiles faintly, but just for a moment.]

It's a good word. It's a weight... and a shadow. I can feel how much pain and suffering there was here.

[pompous_today]

[Simon nodded, then tilted his head, curious.]

Are you an empath? I ask because my sister is one... she tends to avoid coming on here because of it.

[tobeajedi]

Dr. Crusher asked me that too. [She shakes her head.] Not in the way you mean, I think. I'm Human, but I have a connection to the Force--it's an energy field that binds all life.

[She looks around the bulkheads.]

So a place like this, where there was so much pain... it leaves a mark there.

[pompous_today]

[Simon listened, fascinated.]

I have never heard of such a thing before... but I think... it makes sense to me, in a way. When death touches a place, you can feel it linger, especially if you knew the people- or creatures, in this case- who inhabited it. It leaves a mark. Some think of it as ghosts or spirits.

[tobeajedi]

[She nods fervently.]

I don't see you know... ghosts or spirits. [that's a dead-Jedi-Master thing and one she hasn't personally encountered, although since her Master became one with the Force, she hopes she'll see him again.] But yes. You know they were here--you can feel that they suffered badly. [She pulls in a little, holding her elbows.] It'll be here for a long time.

[pompous_today]

Indeed it will. I can understand why people want to make the most of this space, when we can get crowded inside of our ships, but it doesn't seem quite... right to me. I examined the remains of the ship's former residents, and worked with the living members of their species. I know they suffered here, and even if their comrades performed their own death rites to send them on to the afterlife, it's hard to forget that.

[tobeajedi]

Yeah. Being kinda cramped feels a lot better than setting up shop in a tomb. Just because it's over doesn't mean we ought to act like it didn't happen, or it wasn't important.

[pompous_today]

[Simon nodded.]

I have to admit I am conflicted- I came here to look at possible locations for a medical clinic. My job is to give my patients care, and having more room to do that would be a big help to me and the other medics. Giving people whose ships don't have medbays a place to go would help me rest a little more easily. But of course, there are the moral concerns we just discussed. There are no easy answers.

[tobeajedi]

For what it's worth, I think the medical clinic is a really good idea. It would... [make up? wrong phrase, seems a little pat.] It would start tipping the balance back if there was a place of healing here.

[pompous_today]

That's a good point. Restoring life, to make the place feel more alive again. Paying back something for the lives that were lost here...

[tobeajedi]

Yeah, exactly. It would put good back. [She brushes her fingers over a wall. Way better than sticking shops and cantinas, like they just dumped it carelessly.

[pompous_today]

Indeed. ... Again, I can understand the urge, while still disagreeing that it's necessary. But then, I wouldn't have much use for a bar or a shop. And perhaps the others think of it as a new beginning, or it doesn't enter into their heads that making use of this space for those things could be seen as disrespectful. It is a good way for us to all cooperate on something.