sith_happened | Office hours [all day]

Current Mood: pensive

Entry tags:

Office hours [all day]

Anakin was in his office as usual today, glaring angrily at the Christmas themed ads as they popped up on his computer screen.

"Can't I get through Thanksgiving first?" he complained aloud.

The door was open.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I suppose asking why they felt that way would be a foolish question," he replied.

"I think if any of us had gotten close enough to speak to them, then there would not be as many of us that returned here safely. Raven thought about trying to identify the leader and trying to reason with him, but then she and I decided that would not be the wisest course of action." Mainly because Cassidy had brought him up and then Raven wasn't thrilled with the idea of Cassidy going into danger with her.

Anakin nodded. "Teenagers were probably not going to impress someone who seemed to be relying on terror as his primary tactic. Did the Jhinka use Craft as well?"

Cassidy shook her head. "They didn't seem to be able to use Craft. They used their greater numbers and weapons to kill anyone they got close to." Cassidy's eyes filled. "There were only fifty children left alive at the end. Fifty children and less than five hundred adults -- and I was told this had been a large and prosperous village before the Jhinka attack."

"What was Karla doing there," Anakin replied, "or don't you know?"

"She was there to help Lady Jaenelle," Cassidy said. "There had apparently been earlier trouble and Karla followed Jaenelle and Prince Lucivar." She shook her head. "That's when they got trapped -- because both Karla and Jaenelle sensed something was wrong in the village and they went to assist."

Anakin nodded, filing that away. "So how are you?"

Cassidy didn't fidget. "I don't know," she finally answered truthfully. "First it was feeling all of that hatred and destruction. Then it was trying to help the ones that survived. And then feeling that power..." She looked up. "Jaenelle killed them all. The many thousands of Jhinka and they all started exploding... the sound was horrible -- and so was witnessing everything that was happening. The power knocked me down and I remember thinking that if I could just hold onto the land I would be okay and I wouldn't be swept away in what I was feeling." She shuddered. "I just kept trying to keep my hands buried in the land and tried to keep myself intact."

Anakin was decidedly less than impressed with Jaenelle. His lips pursed. "So do you still feel...yourself?"

"My Jewels and my web are intact," she answered automatically. "Shira has been staying with me, and sometimes Elle. I can't..." She swallowed. "I can't stop seeing it all. I can't stop what I felt. I mean, I know it was harder on everyone else who are more powerful than me, so I'm trying but..."

But she was a bit shaky even if she couldn't say the words out loud.

"Don't try to base how you should react based on the others," Anakin counseled. "You don't know their lives, or what else they have seen. Some were more equipped to witness atrocities than you were."

"I thought the worst thing was seeing all of those hacked up bodies and seeing all of the dead children." She looked up at him, her hands closing and opening around each other. "That was bad... but not the worst thing. They just all suddenly died. All of them, sir. She let loose and every one of them was dying and screaming."

Anakin nodded. "And that was wrong, pure and simple. You're right to be upset."

"I keep thinking and wondering why there wasn't a better way, but then when I remember what was going on and how weak we had all gotten from all of the work we were trying to do... was there a better way? Was there something that was overlooked where so much death didn't have to happen like that?" Her eyes were shadowed. "Or did it really come down to there being no other way if any of us were going to survive?"

It was obvious that Cassidy kept reliving everything in her mind from those days -- and that she was moving between relief and guilt.

"Don't let the past have too much control over your present," Anakin advised. "Learn and then move on."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Office hours [all day]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject