I Know Something About Pain You Don't

All her things were packed; her room had been restored to its original state, her X-Wing was prepped, and her blaster, gaderffii, and lightsaber cleared out of the weapons locker. Tahiri didn't own that much, and everything non-essential that she'd accumulated over the last three years had been shipped out ahead of her. The rest was stowed safely in her X-Wing in the junkyard, and her lightsaber clipped to her belt.

She wasn't one to leave without saying goodbye, though, and she'd made sure to send messages to let them know she was headed out, that she'd love to see them one more time before she left, and if not then she'd keep in touch and try to come back for a visit as soon as she could -- and, most importantly, that she cared about them all. That was something she'd never leave unsaid again.

But now all of the preparations were done and there were still a few hours to go before Tahiri absolutely had to leave, and she made her way out to the patch of beach where she'd spent so much time. (It was always the same, and yet different, as was the nature of sand, and there was something fitting about that. Tahiri supposed she could puzzle out the philosophy of it all on the trip home.) There would be beaches on Zonama Sekot, she was sure, but none of them held the memories, painful and happy and everything in between, of this one.

Walking a couple of feet out into the surf, she stood and let the waves wash over her feet, closed her eyes, and opened herself to the Force to really just feel Fandom one more time.

[OOC: *CLIIIIIIIIIIIIINGS to my girl forever wah* Tahiri's last post in Fandom, yes, and absolutely open if you want to stop by. I'll happily SP this as long as necessary, since I don't think I'm gonna be pinging too fast at work. Mostly because I don't want to have to explain why I'm all wibbly . . .]

Tahiri only had days left in Fandom, and in her determination to make them count she'd made up her mind to spend some quality time with Firekeeper and Blind Seer while she could.

. . . yes, this meant portaling the three of them back to Disneyland to show them what they'd missed while they'd been away; from what Jaina had said (or more significantly, hadn't said) about the experience she suspected the bright colors and cheerfulness might do the wolves some good.

It had taken some smooth talk -- always a challenge for her -- and a little bit of Jedi mind trickery to get them to let Blind Seer into the park as a companion animal, but she'd managed, and had her map in hand as they headed onto Main Street.

"I scouted the place pretty thoroughly while I was covering Master Skywalker's class," she told them in her usual rapidfire way. "And there's a few rides that are so bizarre you have to experience them to believe them."

She really should have a bad feeling about this, but . . .

[OOC: NFB for distance, and for the wolves plz!]

The datapad on Tahiri's lap currently displayed a map of the Outer Rim -- the Sluis sector, to be specific -- with planets color-coded according to whether they were held by the Yuuzhan Vong or the New Republic . . . no, wait, it was the Galactic Alliance now, and she wasn't sure she was thrilled about that. The notebook lying on the bed beside her held a couple of pages of scribbled notes on ideas for Flight Club, since she'd completely forgotten about it on Monday after Ben had come by to tell her where he was going.

Tahiri's attention was split between the two, but that was a completely livable kind of division; she'd be smiling at the thought if she wasn't concentrating so hard on the map on her datapad.

You'd think she was trying to plot a course into the Dagobah system or something.

[OOC: Expecting a phone call, but it's open! As is the door. I keep forgetting to mention that.]

She had a lot to think about. She supposed she ought to be used to it by now, but it all just made everything in her head so much busier. Tahiri was tired of being tired, tired of losing chunks of her weeks because she'd been shoved to the back of her own mind by Riina, tired of her own mental stability being a rearguard battle of attrition.

There was no way she'd ever be the person she was before; she knew that now, and she'd accepted that, or been worn down enough to give in to it, if you wanted to look at it that way. The matter of accepting who she needed to become, though, was a snarl she'd yet to cut through. What Tahiri had learned from Tara did change things somewhat -- for all that the Yuuzhan Vong were fanatical and vicious, there was some innate decency somewhere. Beneath it all. She supposed she ought to have known that by now, having been raised by a race feared by most of Tatooine's populace, but . . .

Well. But what, she wasn't sure yet. So, avoiding the oddly persistent fruitcakes, she'd slipped away into the preserve as she did so often these days to find herself a quiet spot and meditate.

Or try to.

( Firekeeper, on the other hand, was less interested in meditation and more in finding a good spot to start a fire. )

[OOC: Preplayed with the always amazing kestrelswolf, who made a handful of pings so much more than I hoped they'd be and as such gets my everlasting love. NFI, subject of conversation NFB, and OOC totally okay.]

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]

Sometimes Tahiri wondered if there was some kind of cosmic rule about everything going wrong at once. The day had started off well enough, and the field trip had promised to be fun.

But then there had been zombies, and Tahiri was far less than thrilled about her reaction to them. Getting back to the group hadn't been a highlight of her day either.

And as if that hadn't been bad enough (because really, hadn't it?) she'd come home to find a message from Firekeeper about going away for a while, and on top of that there was the message from Ben that was about the farthest possible thing from reassuring.

Sore, exhausted, and badly freaked out for reasons that had nothing to do with the zombies themselves, Tahiri headed straight for a really, really long shower and then her room, where she promptly curled up on her bed and tried to put herself through some meditative techniques.

[OOC: Establishy/linkdroppy, but open if you want with the caveat that I'm going to bed in about an hour. ETA: Wait, did I just linkdrop? Well, now I'm scared.]

Tahiri had been too wiped out to even take her boots off on the shuttle back to Fandom, but the first thing she did when she set foot on the causeway was fumble the laces undone and kick off the evil Sith-invented things. (She'd long since revised her theory that they were torture devices due to . . . well, perspective, but she was still sure the Sith were responsible.)

She was moving a little stiffly, the side effect of sitting on a couple of ships in hyperspace for so long, so soon after the physical punishment of Lord Nyax's pain-wave. The first thing she did when she got back to the fifth floor of the dorms was hit the shower and change into one of the new, clean flightsuits she'd gotten just before leaving Borleias. With her hair still dripping a little, she headed back to her room and stood in the doorway for a minute, just looking at her bed.

"I've missed you," she told it, not paying any mind to the one surprisingly well-worn (and quite frankly gross) boot that rolled out into the hallway as she dropped her pack on the floor and went to sprawl out. It had been quite the trip, and there were a few things she was going to have to think about, but for now she just wanted to lie down and not move for a while.

[OOC: And she's back, yay! Post is open, and door is cracked, and there's a shoe in the hall, but she's not getting up off that bed. Feel free to assume she sent you a message or seriously, just wander on in. Bits of SP here and there when I go to run errands, but otherwise around! ETA: For time purposes I'm gonna say she beat the cruise people back to the causeway by a little bit. ETA: Yeah, you're all chronologically before Ben, okay?]

It had been just over two weeks since they'd arrived, and Tahiri was packing. ( Not to go back to Fandom -- not yet. )

And here she'd been thinking this trip hadn't been awkward enough.

Tahiri wondered how much time had passed in Fandom; from what little the Jaina there had told her about her own trips home, she guessed that time didn't necessarily move at the same pace. She had no idea how much longer she'd be gone or even what would happen, but for now she had a few minutes to herself. It seemed as good a time as any to put in a call or two back to Fandom, or wherever her friends were now.

[OOC: Yeah, this post is totally a spacer to spread things out a little longer. If your character knows what she's up to and would like a (brief) call from Tahiri, feel free to ping in as receiving one! She won't really give out details (so I don't joss myself) but you're welcome to have her check in with you if you like. Mega-SP during the day as I sneak tags on my phone and then around in the afternoon/evening Pacific time.]

Tahiri had contemplated, briefly, checking out the cop convention, but decided against it in the end, opting for a handwavey workout in the gym instead before returning to her room. She'd promised Firekeeper that she'd try and get a hold of a copy of some of Master Tionne's ballads, after all (not that Tionne was technically a Master yet but she'd been Tahiri's teacher for years because somebody got chronology mixed up, oops) -- it might be a little difficult, since last she'd heard they'd been somewhere in the Deep Core, but she'd try anyway.

Added to the list of Things to Not Write Home About Ever: Dear Master Skywalker, I know what a dork you were as a teenager. Also, please don't ever flirt with me again. It was disturbing.

[OOC: For the roomie, but also open! May be a bit of SP as I relocate from Panera to the other coffee shop but other than that I am arouuuuuuuuuuund.]