⁰¹ Rise With The Dawn || The Acolyte

xxiii. Inner Turmoil

Kalna felt the presence again and she was shaking her head. "I thought that I told you that, I didn't want to see you." She said and when the person walked around to look at her, it wasn't Qimir. "What the hell do you want?" Kalna asked.

"I'm just here to say that I'm sorry for what he did." Laena admitted and Kalna looked at her. "Your way of punishing him for it was rather... Very creative, I must say." She gestured at the words that Kalna had carved into her own arms, knowing that Qimir would feel it and Laena nodded. "I would've done the same thing."

"Do you really care about him that much to stay with him even after he slaughtered half a dozen Jedi?" Kalna asked and Laena watched her. "You don't have a red lightsaber. You toe the line between light and darkness, like a few other Jedi do. You are an enigma. Not a dark warrior, but certainly not a warrior of the light either."

"The same could very well, be said for you." Laena pointed out as she was sitting across from her. "You could have easily killed everybody with that blast of power last night, from how upset you were about them. About..."

"Jecki and Yord." Kalna could barely even speak their names without a tremor in her voice and Laena nodded. "You kept me away from them, you stopped me." She said and Laena sighed. "Why would you stop me?!"

"Because if our positions were switched and it was you and Yord that were the aggressors, you would have done the exact same thing." Kalna reared back in shock, before the scarred woman swiftly disappeared in a blink.

Kalna stared at where she had been for a few seconds in complete silence, her jaw fell open once she realized that Laena, as much as she hated to admit it... She was right.

A knock came at her door and Kalna didn't even move to stand up, before Krilponnia's big and furry frame was standing in the doorway.

"Master?" The Wookiee let out a mournful whine and she was nodding. "They chose to attack, you could not have stopped them." He reminded her and she was putting her head in her hands.

"No. But I should have killed..." Kalna lowered her head even further as she was beginning to tremble. "I should've killed Qimir when I had the chance, back on Olega and... I didn't know for sure, he had changed since I knew him. I didn't know!" She said as her voice cracked, when she broke back down from Shyriiwook into speaking Basic when she couldn't hold the emotions back again.

Krilponnia let out a mournful howl at the sight of her obvious pain, while he felt her pain and her shame, since she was supposed to be showing him how to be a Jedi. Not how to break down after multiple heavy, difficult losses.

Krilponnia was moving his arms around her, while she felt him crying as well. Both of them, Master and Pupil. They were both crying together, when Sol walked by the room and Krilponnia hit the button to close the door in between them.

"Leave me." Kalna ordered in Shyriiwook after they had been sitting silently for long enough, the tears were long gone and Krilponnia nodded very slightly in acknowledgement, before he walked out of the room.

Kalna stared at the burn marks on the wall as she was breathing shakily, trying to slow it down as she prepared herself to do something that she swore, she would never do again.

Kalna steadied herself and she focused on the person that she wanted to contact and she was waiting for it. For the familiar presence that always lingered in the back of her mind, watching and waiting for the one moment of weakness.

Across the galaxy on the planet with no name from the Jedi, Qimir looked up at the sense of somebody being in his head and he scoffed. "I thought that you didn't want to talk to me." He said as he saw her standing there, watching him as she was shaking her head.

"I'm not here to talk, Qimir." Her eyes briefly flashed with anger as Qimir lifted his eyebrows, crossing his arms over his chest at the words. "I'm here to show you, how much pain a Jedi has to hide." He dropped the bowl onto the ground with a clatter as the soup went everywhere.

The emotions were flooding over him and Kalna's eyes burned with fire. Kalna's anger, it was a darkness that she was only meant to stop. Not to give in, but she was losing control again and again. The tipping point was what he had done and now, he felt the emotional weight of everything that she had to carry.

"Goodbye, brother." Kalna disappeared as Qimir staggered, practically choking on all of the pain and the grief that was rushing over him. Everything that they were feeling onboard Kalna's ship, it was being directed to him.

To the person that was the cause of it all along. The killer of Kelnacca, the one person who had singlehandedly taken out five Jedi, plus Jecki and Yord.

The cause of the emotions that were currently being thrown at him with all the subtlety of a stampeding herd of cattle.

Back onboard Sol's ship, Kalna opened her eyes again and she smirked dangerously. If anybody else onboard the ship had seen what she had done, the expression that was crossing her face was reminiscent of Qimir's after he had killed Jecki.

There was darkness in her, just as there was in everyone. A darkness for her that she had unleashed, showing after the deaths of the team and two of the people that she cared about the most.

But also, part of it came from Qimir and their bond through the Force. Not that she would ever admit it, not while they both were still alive at any rate.