I Know Something About Pain You Don&#39;t

Tahiri managed a smile when she opened the door and stepped back to let Tara in. "Hey. You made it," she said, sounding a little relieved about that. "You've met Ben, right? I wasn't sure."

[OOC: That is perfectly fine. :D]

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Ben gave her a quick smile. "Hi."

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"Hi," Tara returned, with a tiny waggle of her fingers and a slight, crooked smile. "I -- I don't think we've talked? But I've seen you around and everything."

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Tahiri picked up on Tara's uncertainty, but she remembered the reaction she'd gotten last time she'd tried to offer reassurance through the Force and instead said, with an awkward gesture toward her desk, "There's cookies, if you want them?"

How did you start a conversation like this? Sometimes she wished she had a better sense of social skills.

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Ben gave Tahiri a tiny smile and reached out to squeeze her hand. "There's also ice cream," he added.

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"I can always take a cookie," Tara said, trying to sound relaxed.

... she was Tara. She didn't do so well with it.

"And ice cream. We don't want it to melt, right?"

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"Unless you like ice cream soup." That was a subject Tahiri could talk about with some confidence, sadly. "Um . . . help yourself, sit down, and everything."

And because this was Tahiri, the occasional urge to blurt things out with no lead-in whatsoever couldn't be suppressed forever. "I meant to thank you for the flowers. And see how you were doing. It's just been, well, things have been a little crazy."

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Ben was content to kind of fade into the background now, keeping his ears open and tuning into the Force to tell him what he needed to know.

...he also took some ice cream, though.

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Tara took some ice cream,dipped her cookie in the ice cream, chewed, and swallowed, not really tasting anything except sweet. She turned to Tahiri. "I'm not sure where to start," she admitted. "What do you remember?"

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Tahiri glanced out the window briefly, her eyes going the slightest bit unfocused as she tried to put things together. "I remember leaving the picnic, vaguely. Everything goes fuzzy after that until I was in the shop and you were thanking me for something, and I didn't know what it was. What was she -- what was I acting like, when I got there?"

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Tara hesitated, eyes stuttering to Ben quickly in case he wanted to interject. "Angry," she said softly. "She was swearing at my dad, right away. It sounded like swearing. It wasn't English."

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Well, that wasn't starting off sounding too promising, and Tahiri bit her lip, snapping a cookie in half between her fingers. Tara had said she, not you, though, and that was . . . a good thing? Maybe? "No. It wouldn't have been. Sorry about that. What do you think set her off?"

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Tara had said she because the girl in the shop had been as different from Tahiri as she could imagine. The physical body matched; nothing else did.

Also because Tahiri said she first.

"I don't -- we were arguing," she admitted. "My father was trying to get me to come home, and, uh, we were talking to Illyria about -- whether he was right about something. And then you, she -- you came in. Swearing."

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Which was fair enough. "Your father." Tahiri frowned. "That doesn't make sense. Family's supposed to be more important than anything to them, so why would she -- why did he want you to come home again?"

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"... because he always told me I'm part demon." Tara was talking to her shoes, to her melting ice cream, to everything except Tahiri. "It was the weekend before my birthday. He -- he said it might start to express itself, once I was sixteen."

"Who are them?" she asked, to keep Tahiri from commenting too much on what she'd just said.

Edited Date: 2009-11-13 08:16 pm (UTC)

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That was a smart move, even if Tahiri wasn't as quick to offer up commentary on everything the way she'd been inclined to when she was younger, for reasons that had a lot to do with the answer to Tara's question.

She reached up to brush her hair away from her forehead, leaving a few stray cookie crumbs on the three vertical scars that ran from her eyebrows to her hairline. "The Yuuzhan Vong," she said after a moment. "A race from outside our galaxy. When I was fourteen they . . . captured me. Tried to make me one of them. For a long time we thought it didn't work but it turns out they didn't really fail."

Tahiri smiled wryly and jabbed a cookie fragment into her ice cream. "I was really hoping not to have to introduce any more of my friends to Riina."

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Tara's face bore a deep look of concentration as she tried to make that make sense.

"Oh -- so. That's the static in your aura? What they did to you?"

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Tahiri nodded, glancing Ben's way for reassurance. "I thought it was just memories, the things they put in my head. It's more than that."

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Ben gripped her hand tightly. "You're doing fine," he said softly, sending a wave of reassurance toward her.

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"I'm sorry," Tara said, a little feebly. "She, you -- she helped me that day. If that helps you now."

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"It does," Tahiri replied, raising her head to look at Tara, confused and tired but appreciative. She wondered, vaguely, if that static in her aura was stronger now than it had been. "It threw me, because I've never been able to think of them as doing anything good for people. They're not a nice culture at all."

She took a breath. "At least, not that I've seen. But I think this changes things."

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"She wasn't nice." Tara tucked her hair back, earnest. "She was, um, scary. But I think -- I think maybe some people need to be scared."

And some of those people were related to her.

"How does it change things, though?" She looked at Ben, to see if he might have an idea, to make sure it was okay for her to ask.

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"It's a bit like what your father told you," Ben said, squeezing Tahiri's hand. "Tahiri thought she had to live with someone who was completely alien in her head forever."

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