RPlog:Escape with Simon

Cockpit - Tortured Soul You are in the cockpit of this fighter. The space is cramped, although luxurious by the standards of most fighter pilots. At the front, underneath the transparisteel canopy, is the pilot's seat, in front of the comprehensive pilot's console. Aft of this, to starboard, there is the large weapons console for controlling the formidable arsenal of this craft. The console has two seats facing it, for the two gunners. One controls the large ion cannons and the proton torpedo launchers, while the other controls the double laser turret and the concussion missile launchers. To port and slightly aft of the weapons console is the navigator/sensor officer's console, where communications, sensors and the hyperdrive are all coordinated. Fore of this is a large heavily-armoured hatch, leading to port, while at the aft of the compartment is an automatic door.

With his eyes narrowed, Simon studies Jessalyn. His left hand lingers over his head within easy access of his weapon, though he's certain he won't need to use it. Nonetheless... he was weary, and he knew he looked it. It was bad enough he had to leave the piloting of the ship to his... companion? Captive? It was all too amgiguous for him to rest easy.

"Well," he says, his voice cold and empty. "At least we came away with that which the Jedi sought. They will never find their treasure, now."

Jessalyn grits her teeth, keeping her face turned from the man seated beside her. She knows it won't take much for him to turn on her and decide she's worth more to him dead than alive. That's part of the reason why she allowed him to escape with her to begin with. It was a fate she deserved. Until this moment she hadn't realized Simon was unaware that she no longer had the prize in her possession. It had been clipped safely to her belt during the entirety of their duel, only to be guided through the Force into Mira's hands before they made their escape.

Without looking at the Selas, Jessalyn chews on her lower lip, hands moving to turn the navcomputer towards her. She has no idea what coordinates she should enter, but she wants nothing more than to leave this forsaken place -- watching the Uwannabuyim shoot into hyperspace on the scanner readouts only makes her heart sink deeper into the pit of her stomach. What had she gotten herself into? "I'm afraid... I don't have it," she confesses. "Mira took it with her."

A long, drawn out sigh is the first of Simon's responses. He continues to give her a cold, narrow eyed stare, unmoving save for the fingers of his left hand, which now stroke the portion of his lightstaff near his grasp. It was still warm from all the recent activity. He was still exhausted from all the recent activity, but he was almost ready to press his limits. Almost.

"So..." he says at last, his voice a blade of ice, cutting through the distance between them in quick, short, cold stabs. "My efforts were for nothing. I go to steal the Jedi's prize, and instead come away with one they were ready to discard themselves. Your surrender was nothing but Jedi deceit, after all. Instead of killing me with your hands, you choose this... torture. When I think I've seen the depth your vileness, you show me new depths." His words rain down harshly upon her, echoing much of what she thinks of herself at this moment. Absurdly, she wishes she could do nothing more than curl upon her agony and spend the next several eons crying. There's so much agony brimming just beneath the surface. Once more the Force has fled from her, and she's even more terrified of using it than she was before. Now she knows what she is capable of, how easily the Dark Side can take hold of her. Did she want to end up like Simon, twisted and almost unrecognizable from the person he had been? It would be better to forsake the Force altogether.

And although she cannot call herself a Jedi anymore, she knows that the prize belongs in their hands. Orson... Mira... Cronos. They were the New Jedi Order that would be built without her. She was certain of their capability and relieved that she would no longer be there to taint them and spoil their victory.

"You're right," she whispers. "I am vile. Even if it's not for the reasons you think," she says, eyeing him warily. His hand was straying too close to the lightstaff for her sense of comfort. But what did she care? She lifts her chin defiantly, a challenge in her eyes when she finally looks over at the Selas. If death was what was in store for her, then Simon deserved to have that satisfaction more than anyone else. "But I'm not here to torture you."

Moving with unnatural speed granted from an iron grip on the True Source, Simon shifts in his seat quickly. He moves as if to strike Jessalyn, only his hand never moves from its position behind his head near his lightstaff. The horns piercing his cheeks come within a few centimeters of Jessalyn's face, stopping as quickly as he'd moved. His mouth twists into an animal's snarl, and his eyes are wide with rage, perhaps madness.

"Then what are you hear for, Jedi" Simon snarls. Spittle dribbles out one edge of his mouth, dangling from his chin as he stares his own defiance back at her. Her eyes squeeze shut, unable to bear how close his hideously disfigured face comes to hers, and Jessalyn's stomach actually turns. She knows how tainted he is, the foulness of his soul reflected now in the terrible visage. "Don't call me that," she whispers, bringing her hands up to rest against her cheeks as she risks glancing at him from the corners of her eyes. Despite her reluctance to answer his question aloud, she can't help but wonder about it herself. There were a thousand reasons she was here, but would Simon be able to comprehend any of them? To accuse, to escape, to redeem, to ask why, to learn, to die. Her mouth opens and closes as she tries to find the words that will appease him, "I'm here because I have no where else to go," she finally whispers, her voice catching painfully in her throat.

Slowly, Simon withdraws from Jessalyn, settling back in his seat. He brings his right arm up to wipe the dribble from his chin, pausing afterwards to glance down at the broken end of his arm. Jessalyn's saber had done a number on him, blistering back the flesh that had partially healed, cutting away the disfigured bone back to nothing. It was a bitter loss, losing the weapon that he'd used to pierce the Jedi Master's flesh with. At least now, he could get on with growing back his lost hand, the feat that defined the primary difference between he and the Jedi. He embraced life and fought to cut out its corruption, knowing that his last stroke would be to snuff out his own life. The Jedi embraced deceit, grafting the lies of technology to themselves in order to stretch out their own lives, pitiful as it may be.

Lowering his arm, he reaches to the True Source and takes the first steps in the long process of regrowing his flesh. He takes a deep, calming breath, then says in a tone more like what would emerge from the Simon Jessalyn had known before, "You are a Selas in truth, then. Unborn, without family, without property, without hope of returning to the society you had known."

His response is astonishing since Jessalyn was convinced his next move would have been to injure, if not incapacitate her. She would have to fly them to some safe harbor where he could coerce a new pilot into his service before he would really be able to do with her as he wished. It's a small comfort, since the impact of his words is almost as debilitating as any physical blow.

"Yes," she agrees quietly, raking a hand back through her hair as the tears fill her eyes again. "Perhaps you are right, Simon Sezirok. I have nothing. I can never go back. Is that what it means to be a Selas?"

To never look at him again. Never touch him again. The idea is too painful to bear, but only slightly less worse than the thought of having to face Orson or any of the Jedi again for that matter. They would see her for what she was now. She was a pariah to the Jedi.

"So... you can't kill me till we find a planet to land on first. Do you have any suggestions?" she asks, lifting her hand to the navcomp and bringing up a list of nearby systems.

"Don't be so certain of that," Simon says, curling one end of his mouth up in a wry smirk. "The fool pilot that was bringing me in to Griffon space thought he'd try something clever. He thought as you, that I could not handle this ship at all. I am not so helpless. I silenced this ship, then broke his neck before he could complain." Simon pauses to gesture to the burned out communications panel, twisted wire sticking out of a burned gash of metal and plastic. "After that, I flew the ship far enough to get the Griffons to bring me the rest of the way."

"So do not think yourself too safe," Simon continues, nodding his head to Jessalyn. "Think that, and you might try to convince yourself that the Jedi will take you back. That you are not alone. What was it you'd done to lose your way with the Jedi, anyway? Did you not please Orson Tighe as he wanted to be pleased?" "Why should you care?" she hisses at Simon, stung. The tears that had gathered stream down Jessalyn's pallid cheeks. She didn't really care if he killed her now or after the trip to hyperspace, and she's starting to realize that death will indeed be her inevitable outcome. "And you saw for yourself what I've done to lose my way. I could have killed you."

And it wasn't just killing him that would have condemned her soul, for Simon probably did deserve that brand of justice in the vast scheme of the Force. But for her to have wielded the Darkness to take her revenge, to have sunk so low that she hungered for his blood to run thick over her hands, not to mention the plans she had spawned in those vile moments.... No. If she was capable of any of that, she could not be a Jedi. Why had she never known?

"I can't... use the Force. I can't face the Jedi. I've failed... at everything."

"You practice deceit so much that you deceive yourself," Simon says, coldly. He shakes his head, looking Jessalyn over as if examining something broken and pitiful and useless. "You speak as if you actually believe that you are the only Jedi that carries the corruption in their soul. Fool. Did I not tell you that the soul could not be touched carelessly? Yet you argued that it was strong, resilient. Look at you! Where is your strength now? If the Jedi are not all corrupt, then they are naive, like Markus and Mira. Markus, the first that I tried to teach to live an honorable life with this cursed connection to the True Source, reached out and touched my mind before as we parted ways on that fallen ship. He will be the next to face the fire he plays with, mark my words."

Shifting in his seat, Simon casts a glance out the viewport, focusing briefly on the debris of the Titan. "You deceive yourself about the corruption, and you deceive yourself about the True Source. You, like so many before you, will not merely stop touching the True Source because you've bruised your hand. You are a slave to it, like a drunkard is a slave to his wine."

It had been the terrible closeness and intimacy of the Force-bond that made Orson believe they were too much for each other. The emotions too strong, too present -- so real that they took on a life of their own. That and the past which haunted him still, the memories Jessalyn hadn't been able to ease away or erase, had driven him from her. And she was certain that her own tainted actions in the meantime had sealed that fate forever.

She had believed that giving everything of herself to him would begin to make up for it, would bring them so close together that nothing could destroy that bond. He had wanted her so badly, pursued her so relentlessly, shown her so much of himself that she found it incredibly easy and... right to love him.

But it makes Simon right in so many ways that a sour taste bubbles up in the back of Jessalyn's throat. She never wants to touch the Force again. But there's only one way that will happen.

The lithe girl staightens up in the same motion that she unstraps herself from the pilot's seat, and she stands, shifting to stand behind her chair and looking solemnly down at the Selas across from her. "Then kill me. I don't want to perpetuate this anymore. I want it over with."

Cold blue eyes stare up into fiery green, the smoldering there shimmering in the smoky blue of unshed tears. Gritting his teeth, Simon rises to stand in front of Jessalyn, taking the advantage of height from her, though his knees threaten to buckle from fatigue. Though it is a risk, he lowers his hand away from his weapon, holding it as his side. It quivers, either from exhaustion or frustration.

Shaking his head, he speaks, and his voice is deathly quiet and serious. "No. Do you think you are the only Selas to want to lose all honor, discard their burden and responsibility like rubbish, and take the Last Embrace before their time? Only an honorless doochok would be so blind and stupid as to help with this. You and Mira would never believe me when I called this connection to the True Source a curse. Now you know. You feel it more deeply than any other self deceiving Jedi will ever know it. And you want me to dishonor myself an you and kill you because of your weakness?"

Simon turns his head and spits on the cockpit floor. He turns back to Jessalyn and says, "Kill yourself. Or try to remember honor. I'm not going to make it easy for you, Jessalyn Valios." Folding his arms in front of his chest, Simon takes a step back, as far back as the cramped confines of the cockpit will let him.

The ignition sequence on her temper finally completes, and Jessalyn glares daggers at Simon through her tears, some tiny quiver of pride keeping her chin held aloft. It's all show, though; on the inside she's crumbling into irreconcilable pieces. "Isn't that your intention, anyway, Selas?" she demands, taking a step toward him. "You want to wipe us all out of existence, isn't that right? And I'm giving you the chance to put your words into action. Striking me down would only further your cause."

The lightstaff resting against Simon's back begins to quiver as she exerts her concentration on it, a bitter inward laugh spared for the realization that she's already breaking her vow not to use the Force. But if it can end this here now, it'll be worth it. She puts her hands together, lifting them up in slow motion, wanting to call the weapon into her hands.

Feeling the True Source flow through Jessalyn, feeling his weapon quiver at his shoulder, Simon starts to raise his hand to grasp it before it can leave its resting place, only to let his arm drop back to his side. He shakes his head, looking as tired as he felt.

"I seek to remove the corruption. Kill the Jedi, then the Sith. Then myself. It's not pity that will guide my hand, but necessity. Strike me down, take up my quest. I've felt your strength. Perhaps you will be able to succeed where I fail."

Jessalyn finds herself amused that he misunderstands her intentions, and a genuine chuckle rises in her throat. Where it came from, she has no idea. She didn't think she was capable of mirth. Her slender white hands lower as she releases the weapon with her mind, and the shaking stops. Dark red hair spills into her face as she shakes her head and takes a step toward him again, coming close enough to touch his arm very gently. "You said I could kill myself. I was just going to save you the trouble," she murmurs, and her eyes slip shut. Without pausing to question why, Jessalyn sends a gentle wave of strength from herself into the Selas, a light healing touch that she hopes will signal the start of a firm, if uneasy truce. "Oh, Simon... sometimes the truth is... only a matter of perspective...."

The new found strength given through the True Source from Jessalyn is well received, if not exactly welcome. Anger boils up from within Simon's soul, searing him and lashing him into action. How dare she touch him like this after all that had happened! His left hand flies up, seizing her arm savagely.

The moment of rage passes in a hearbeat, breaking apart as if it were as fragile as a soap bubble. What had she done, now, that deserved his wrath? She was trying to help him. She hadn't invaded his mind or soul. Not this time. Letting out a ragged breath, Simon loosens his grip on Jessalyn's arm, without letting go. He says, "If you are not for me, you are against me. I leave the Sith alone for now because they serve a purpose. You are Selas in truth, now. Despite everything else," he pauses to lift his right arm a fraction. He continues, "I will not waste your life as long as you do not oppose me and live honorably." When Simon takes her arm in his grip, Jessalyn flinches, though she is not surprised. Seeing herself reflected back in his eyes -- well, it's shocking. The pale complexion of her face has taken on a sickly white pallor, bruised circles having formed beneath her perpetually reddened eyes. Her mouth, usually so soft and easy with a smile, is drawn into permanent bitter lines. All she needed were the horns to match Simon's, she tells herself with loathing.

"I'm sorry," she says, meaning it. It wasn't her intention to anger him. She didn't want to hurt him again. She wanted to end the cycle of pain and disappointment. "You have my word I'm not going to try to kill you." Not that he valued her word in any way, but it was important for Jessalyn to make that distinction, if only to herself.

Drawing a slow breath, completing the calm he'd sought after losing his temper, Simon releases Jessalyn's arm and lowers his arm back to his side. He takes another deep breath before speaking, his eyes tracing all the imperfections and damage in Jessalyn's countenance, effects from the harrowing events that unfolded on the Titan. This was the woman hidden underneath the composure. This was what had lurked beneath her skin, waiting to entrap him and twist him to irreversable vileness. All facades and falsehoods had been washed away through the cleansing of tribulation, and Simon could see the truth of her. It sickened him.

"You already have," Simon says, grimly. He raises his left hand to his face, tracing one of his horns with the tip of his index finger. "I'm just not dead yet."

Taking a step toward the passage leading to the cargo area, Simon says, his voice growing intense in its sternness, "We will leave this place. I do not care where you fly us. We are unwelcome anywhere we go, so it makes little difference."

It hurt, knowing that it was her heart, her most secret desires and tenderest of emotions, that had made her so vulnerable, had made her into something capable of hatred and murder. Her burning green eyes are riveted to Simon's face as he traces along the foul horns carved against his cheek. Feeling his disgust, Jessalyn presses her lips grimly together. "You won't die. Not by my hand." And not until you've embraced the Light again, she tells herself with a sudden and unexpected bout of hope. The thought makes her spare a bitter smile for herself -- she could look with hope toward Simon's future, but not her own.

Sagging into the pilot's chair, she stares out into the space which the Uwannabuyim had occupied just a few moments ago, and she swallows hard, figners moving automatically to the control pad of the navcomputer. They would have to land somewhere that wouldn't mind a communication-less ship arriving in-system, which limits their options considerably. "I hope you haven't burned all of your bridges, Simon."

"There is still one that would take me in," Simon says, standing now only partway in the cockpit. "But he would not have you, and you would not have him. He is much less... forgiving... than I am."

Simon starts to duck his head to depart the cockpit once more, then stops again. He doesn't even turn fully back to face Jessalyn, choosing instead to speak over his shoulder. "You should take us some place with open space. Training begins for both of us when we are rested."

Jessalyn's inclination toward their uneasy truce dissolves upon his utterance of this last statement. Her expression is dumbfounded as she nearly leaps from the seat, staring at his departing figure with her mouth agape. "Training?! You are out of your mind, Sezirok. The last thing I want to do is use the Force for any -- anyone's -- purpose again. Even if you can't accept that. It's where I am now. I'm not going to betray the Jedi, even if I'm an utter failure." What Simon wanted to do more than anything at this point in time was recover. He wanted to find a flat uncluttered part of the ship, stretch out, and let his exhaustion thrust him into the peaceful oblivion of sleep. His senses told him that Jessalyn was not going to lead them into destruction just yet. He knew that she had no one left to turn to, so he had little fear of her turning on him in his sleep.

The tone in Jessalyn's voice was compelling enough to give him pause. Turning back, Simon says, "I'm going to show you tomorrow that you stand at a crossroads. You can choose to betray the vile Jedi, the order that discarded you like a piece of rubbish, or you can choose to betray yourself, and ultimately the True Source."

The girl grinds her teeth together, feeling her emotions tugged in a multitude of directions. Had she discarded the Jedi? Or was Jessalyn herself the refuse that needed to be purged from their Order? Had any of them ever done anything but use her gifts and her feelings and her heart to their own ends? Had any of them ever come to her in her time of need? Orson was the only one who had ever been there for her, during her last crisis of the heart, when she was ready to resign herself to hopelessness after Simon's ultimate descent. But that source of comfort was gone now forever. The realization stabs like a million icy knives into her heart.

"There must be some safe haven," she whispers to herself, scanning the computer's starmaps for the closest signs of civilization, and not wanting to honor Simon's words with a reply.

Simon remains where he'd stopped for several moments, watching from a distance as Jessalyn turns to do her work. It seemed that she was starting to gain some of the clarity that he'd found. Before, she never seemed to accept any of the warnings or truths that Simon tried to share with her. Perhaps, now that she had been burned, she could more accept Simon's words. Or perhaps he had taken up her habit, and was deceiving himself.

In either event, tomorrow would be a whole new day, a whole new beginning.