I Know Something About Pain You Don't

Moving down to the cabins had not exactly been a high priority for Tahiri after Saturday night; she and Ben had spent a good portion of Sunday more or less hiding from everything.

Eventually the need to do something superseded the urge to repress -- and it was starting to hit her that in this situation there was less to repress than she'd expected there to be -- and she set out to find her cabin. Packing was, as always, easy; a couple of changes of clothing, her comlink and datapad, and she was basically set.

Which didn't make her alcove any less empty, or the emptiness any more comforting for its expectedness.

Tahiri could say she was meditating, sitting on her bed with her back against the alcove wall. But that would be a lie.

[OOC: Was supposed to do this yesterday but yay for the day absolutely running away on me. Open with patches of SP, for cabinmates or visitors and oh, yeah, that Skywalker kid.]

The dream itself was no surprise; Tahiri had been having dreams like this for over two years now. The setting and the context, though -- those were new. These dreams usually took place back on Yavin 4, or on the Errant Venture,, or an asteroid in the Yag'Dhul sector, or on that worldship orbiting Myrkr.

( She wasn't used to seeing that familiar lopsided grin and those blue eyes a scant meter or two across the salle here in Fandom. )

***
When she woke, smiling wistfully, Tahiri got out of bed and changed into a clean set of robes -- one of her older pairs, well-worn and comfortable even if the trousers were a bit shorter than she'd gotten used to -- before slipping out of the room and away from the dorms. She wasn't sure where she was going just yet, but something was pulling her toward the woods, and without questioning why she followed.

[OOC: 'staaaaaaablishy. Would've been up, you know, forever ago but no, my brain took a siesta.]

She'd spent the night out on the beach with Ben, but a vague unsettling feeling had drawn Tahiri back to the cabins and the comlink she'd left in her alcove there -- it wasn't that she was in the habit of leaving it behind, but she hadn't wanted the potential interruption. (Not of that. Because there was no that. Just a chance to get some uninterrupted sleep, okay?)

There was, in fact, a message waiting for her when she got there, and as soon as she played it the unsettling feeling coalesced into something very much not vague any more. Jaina -- her Jaina at home -- never sounded like this, and yet she was practically exuberant. And it wasn't that Tahiri could blame her for being happy that her twin brother was alive after all.

She'd half expected it, really, and it saved her the guilt of hoping it wasn't going to happen, but at the same time it brought certain unwanted potential futures a little closer than she'd like for comfort. Having just met someone who looked exactly like Jacen, even if George sounded and acted nothing like him, didn't do much to help either. The timing was what really sucked void, though. Tahiri couldn't have stopped being aware of the time that had passed since Anakin's death if she tried, even if she wanted to, and by her count (including the time that had passed on her mission home in spring) it had been a year since Myrkr.

So it . . . wasn't unfair, exactly; she knew that. It was just the fact that she'd gotten news of one of Jaina's brothers being alive again had come now. When it marked a year since Anakin died, and she had to face up -- again -- to the realization that he wasn't coming back.

After getting the message, Tahiri had wandered away from the campsite into the preserve and now found herself staring at a cluster of grotesque-looking angel statues. She didn't know the story of what they were or how they had gotten there, but she got the sense that they were frozen in time, somehow. Stuck in a moment they couldn't get out of.

She hadn't had that dream again last night, but she'd had it often enough in the past few weeks. Had, to some extent, been stuck in that moment for the past year. Looking at the statues now, she wished she couldn't say she knew the feeling.

[OOC: Yeah, I'm a mean, horrible person. I know. I AM SO SORRY. And I swear she will get over this or I'm going to headdesk myself unconscious. Establishy, but open, why not? ETA: Details of convo with Karla NFB, whee.]

Tahiri took her sleep when and where she could get it lately, which wasn't nearly as regularly as she'd like. And yes, part of that was her trying to avoid the dreams. They'd been a problem for two years now, ever since the fall of Yavin 4 and her time in the Yuuzhan Vong shaper compound, but they'd been more frequent since her last trip to Coruscant, more vivid since she'd taken Karla into her memories and relived her torture, more complicated since she'd learned certain things from Ben. And worse by far, of course, since Myrkr. In combination, it really wasn't conducive at all to sleep.

There was only so long she could go, though, before the healing trances she wasn't very good at yet didn't do the trick any more, and by the time she was done getting settled into her cabin the exhaustion had pretty much won out, so Tahiri gave in, stretched out on the bed in her alcove, and closed her eyes.

( This, as it turned out, was exactly why she didn't get much rest lately. (Oh hey there, angst. Again.) )

That was when she woke, as she always did. Tahiri immediately made her way to the bathroom to splash water on her face -- that was a little trickier in the cabin, especially when she was disoriented -- then headed back to her alcove.

Not that she'd be sleeping this time.

[OOC: Just establishy, NFI, and for serious, I was planning on this before I knew trickster_twin was doing something really similar, but it's kind of an awesome coincidence. Bits and pieces of this have been borrowed and tweaked from Edge of Victory 2: Rebirth by Greg Keyes and the evil, evil, evil Star by Star by Troy Denning. OOC's okay though.]

News from home continued to be grim, but that was par for the course these days and so far nothing particularly troubling had come up, although there had been several not so subtle inquiries as to whether she was making much progress in her flight class. (If Tahiri had been insane enough to let on who was teaching said class, she suspected those inquiries would be a lot less restrained.) Somebody had something in mind, clearly, and Tahiri made up her mind that she'd better get serious about asking Jaina for those extra flying lessons sometime soon.

She transmitted her most recent report -- wow, they really had no idea how much she was leaving out -- and set her datapad aside, reaching for a holocube that sat on her nightstand, one that Tionne and Kam had sent her a little while ago. The image inside was of her and Anakin in the days shortly before he'd left the academy to go fight in the war; Tahiri turned the holocube over in her hands but didn't really look at it.

After a minute or two, she set it back on the nightstand and tucked her knees up under her chin, staring out the window into the growing darkness. It had been a hell of a week, and maybe getting away for a day or two would be a good idea.

[OOC: Door is closed, and post is for a certain barefoot buddy but open if you wanna knock or stop by, or live here! *kicks emo girl*]

Tahiri'd been incredibly unsettled since Sunday, when the latest bout of island weirdness had worn off. Talking with Firekeeper -- and the subsequent wrestling match -- had helped as it always did, if not completely; Firekeeper was as close as anyone came to being her best friend around here, even if that was something she'd probably never call anyone else again. She didn't see it happening . . . maybe that was part of the problem.

One of the downsides of the past few days being over was that everything she'd been too preoccupied to think about came rushing back in a way that reminded her more than she wanted it to about the minutes after she'd regained consciousness back in the ruins of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. So as soon as she was out of class -- and that had brought back older memories that hurt more than a little bit, maybe more than they should, in light of the past week -- she headed down to the beach and found herself a spot on an outcropping of rock well away from the water.

It didn't help much either when she realized what was coming up in . . . a few weeks? Something like that, something too close and too far away at the same time. As anniversaries went this wouldn't be among the happy milestones, and she'd be lying if she said she wasn't worried about how she'd deal with that when it came around.

Too much stuff she wasn't ready for. Things she wasn't sure she could let go, or wanted to.

Tucking her knees up under her chin, Tahiri settled down to watch the waves and maybe try to meditate for a while.

[OOC: Establishy (because I'm mean to the kid), but open. It's a multitasking post. it's even kind of a linkdrop, and might even be more of one later. WTF? I never do that. O.O]

Tahiri had promised Dinah an answer to the question she'd asked this morning, so after class she'd left a message for Dinah to meet her out here. Why on the beach, she didn't know; maybe it was the sand, or maybe it was the calming effect of the waves. The ocean was still more or less a novelty for her, anyway.

Knees tucked up under her chin, she sat and stared thoughtfully out at the water as she waited.

[OOC: For Dinah, and conversation with her NFB, but open too, why not?]