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]

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.