Post by Squee on Feb 27, 2009 19:58:19 GMT -5
((Yes, I know its the title to that one song from Evanescence. For all of you who've heard my tangents about Venta, this is one of her little stories that I wrote to kind of explain what happened after a certain event. Just because I'm a freak about my old characters. But, especially Venta. Because, well, sometimes she just doesn't deserve what she receives.
Kind of... okay, pretty depressing. But it's a sad story that's suppose to move you. So, rawr, hate comments aren't allowed. I'm entitled to my sad stories every once in a while.
Inspired by the song by Evanescence. -wink-))
----
“You dared do it!”
The form before her twitched violently beneath her fingers. Wicked long fingers curled around the corner of his jaws, nails dug in until she seized the squeezing motion, leaving her nail embedded into his skin. Her thumbs lightly stroked the corners of his mouth, across his cheeks, and back again. She marveled in the exhilarating fear his presence projected, those once malevolent eyes turned wide and streaked with the pain and wide terror he felt. Her lips were turned into a feral snarl and amber orbs burned hatefully down at him. Faint wisps of violet lightning crackled and singed the air around them as she poured it into the man’s figure. Already she had brought him to his knees, allowing her the higher position to effectively torture him to the death. Already did angry crosses matching that of lightning’s appearance start to mount across his face. Already was any skin beginning to become a sooty ash. His bones started to liquefy, collapsing on themselves, withering him weaker. His mouth was agape in a silent scream of agony and he couldn’t move, pinned by Venta’s use of the Force as wave after wave of lightning simply wracked through his body.
“But, you won’t do it again. I shall make sure of that.”
“That’s enough, Sith.”
The voice was accompanied by the audible activation of a lightsaber and Venta’s awareness caught the sudden, attention wanting pound of another. She tore her nails from the wretched man’s face and turned, seeing an adult Jedi with his Padawan. Though the lightning had extinguished, she assaulted the man’s mind with her own, sending him into convulsing fits. And again, that presence body slammed her, surprising Venta so much her breath escaped from her mouth as if being kicked in the stomach. She detached herself from the man’s mind, feeling him fading quickly anyway. Her eyes riveted on the Padawan, noting the slam had come from her. A slight thing, small for her age, but probably coming of nearly fourteen. She had ginger hair, done up neatly with a few loose strands to frame her face. Ice blue eyes held disinterest as her Master called something of arrest toward Venta.
Venta felt her jaw suddenly tremble. The girl’s arms… they hung limply at her sides, the fingers slightly shriveled from the years of disuse. They were slightly undersized for even her small frame. Her eyes snapped back to the girl’s face, noting those now all to familiar eyes. The sudden name brushed from the Sith’s lips, shuddering as shaky breath was spent.
“Rayn?”
The girl’s widened in surprise, as did the Jedi Knight’s. That confirmed Venta’s suspicions. Rayn looked too much like her father now that she could identify her correctly.
“Rayn, incapacitate her NOW,” screamed the Jedi.
Rayn overcame her own surprise and bolstered the Force, driving a mental attack on Venta so strong she felt her gaze shift and her vision narrow. Audibly, for the first time in a long time, Venta gasped and actually stumbled, mentally unprepared and the psych was her greatest and favorite of weapons. A knife stabbed into her conscious mind and she suddenly found herself devoid of sight, her hearing fuzzy, smell cut off, and she was finally immobile by the third wave. Like a tree, Venta fell over, swallowed by forced unconsciousness.
I’m so tired of being here
Suppressed by all my childish fears
“What are you!” she screamed in confusion, brought about to the present once again. Her memory finished with its invasion. Her amber eyes had snapped open widened as she studied the monstrosity able to penetrate her mental defenses so and make Venta relive her flashback. Cool gray eyes met hers and his gray face remained all the more expressionless.
And if you have leave
I wish you would just leave
She was heavily guarded this time around. Deep within the Jedi Temple, shackled with cuffs of stun and cuffs that tinkered heavily on her ability to use the Force. A generator kicked in as the gray alien stepped back from her, and a yellow energy cage sucked away any little hope of using the Force. There was a hiss over the roar and an enhanced glass cage surrounded her over the energy field. Just beyond that, what Venta could see the Masters on duty take position outside the glass, and the professional studying Venta consulted the mind invading vermin.
Because your presence still lingers here
And it won’t me alone
Something red topped entered the room and Venta felt her heart flutter. Rayn. The girl Padawan would come and look at Venta, watching the professional as she talked to Rayn. Venta felt embarrassed by it, to be looked upon as some laboratory experiment by that of her flesh and bone. Memory after memory was bringing brought of anything remotely related to the Jedi Padawan. Once connected to the Jedi Master Ichigo, and that he was the father, he too had entered into the memory scans. Venta, mental strength spent on reliving those memories, hardly had enough brain power to even think why these Jedi down here wanted such information. Sure, Ichigo was a wanted man now, exiled because he loved Venta, and such love had gotten in the way during a battle of their factions. He had ended up rescuing Venta from the Jedi, getting her away and watching over her until she found the ability to run and hide like she always had. And so many times he had come to rescue her from the clutches of the Jedi, and was always crafty until a simple, unpredicted incident happened that had cost him the life he had known.
And then, they had twins. And Rayn, the gentle fair one of the two, was decided to be presented before the Jedi. It was as Venta had seen in her dreams. Rayn’s life as a Sith would have been miserable. Laniko, Rayn’s sister, made her way as a Gray Jedi with her father, both of them hidden from known galaxy.
These wounds won’t seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There’s just too much that time cannot erase
The decision of Rayn going to the Jedi was harder and more difficult to cope with on Venta’s part than it was Ichigo’s. This would make Rayn the enemy, and she would grow up to see the Sith as the enemy. But Venta could not see Rayn as the enemy. It was… it was unthinkable. Despite what so many Jedi claimed that the Sith felt nothing in their “heartless souls”, they were so very wrong. Venta had cried for so long over Rayn. When she understood Rayn’s disability at birth, she had cried. When the handicap caused needless pain for the girl, an itching sensation that mounted to a full burn that made Rayn as an infant scream in agony, Venta had cried, unable to soothe her child because her healing wasn’t like that of Ichigo’s. When Ichigo and her had snuck before the council with Rayn, the accusation that she would hurt her child made her mad with a rage that even Venta hadn’t been able to describe. And then, when she had left Rayn behind, for a week had she sobbed almost uncontrollably. Selfish… Venta was selfish. She knew it too. She just how selfish she was. She also understood the position of a mother.
When you cried I’d wipe away tears
When you scream I’d fight away all of your fears
I held your hand for all of these years
But you still have all of me
It was these drives as a selfish mother that Venta had learned to stalk her daughter. Yes, she followed her daughter from one part of the galaxy to another. When she couldn’t, she made sure there was a trail to follow when she could return her attention back to her daughter. Venta had been playing the role of a dark, shady guardian angel. Every danger that Venta found out before the Jedi Knight and his Padawan Venta had taken the liberty to remove that threat. She simply could not leave it up to fate whether or not her daughter might survive an encounter or not. If Venta could manipulate the future for the guarantee of Rayn’s safety, she would take it no matter what the risk. She couldn’t lose Rayn. If Venta lost Rayn… it made her tremble at the thought. Not Rayn. Not dear, sweet little Rayn.
You used to captivate me
By your resonating light
Now I’m bound by the life you left behind
The sound of the glass shielding pulling back away startled the Sith Lady. Her head jerked up, sending her matting black locks tossing across her shoulder. The whirring of the Force field stopped and the yellow strings of energy dropped. Venta found her mouth go suddenly dry when she saw who stepped up to greet her imprisoned person. The Masters stepped after the girl, capturing Venta’s mind with their presences to keep her from doing anything unpredictable. But not that she would do anything to Rayn, oh no.
She simply watched as Rayn sat down on her knees in front of Venta. Venta, who had risen to her knees, sat back on her feet and stared back almost as intently as Rayn stared at her. The girl’s brow was ruffled and puzzlement spattered her perfect blue eyes.
“How do you know so much of me? More importantly, why do you follow me?”
Your face it haunts
My once pleasant dreams
Venta continued to stare at Rayn. There were plenty of memories dragged out of Venta that related the young Padawan to the Sith Lady. Were they not telling her? Venta’s chin dropped a little and she shifted. The Masters tensed as if expecting Venta to attack Rayn, as she sat very close to the prisoner.
“They haven’t told you?”
“Tell me what? I know you are Sith. I know you follow me. Do you hope to take me and make me your apprentice? How do you know my father? Is he really my father? Do I have a sister? Did you do anything to them?”
How could she break this down for Rayn? Venta swallowed, rocking over the heels of her feet and sitting on her rump. Her legs folded into a cross. Rayn still sat on her knees, eyes boring, hungry for information she was not receiving from the professional.
“Why do you want to know?”
“You stupid Sith!” Rayn’s words stung Venta. “Because you know! Because I don’t! And they won’t tell me! I have to find out! I don’t know anything of my family, but time to time I feel something reach for me. Sometimes it’s cold and sometimes it’s warm. They are from different people. Who are they?”
[b[Your voice it chased away
All of the sanity left in me[/b]
Ichigo had to be the warm presence she felt stretching out to her from time to time. Foolish man. That would only bewilder and cause her to panic. At least Venta could offer an answer.
“Ichigo Kurisoki, that warmth you feel, is your father. Once a Jedi Master here at this Temple. He was charged as a traitor for rescuing a Sith woman during the war.”
Rayn scoffed. “Why would he do that?”
“Because he loved her.” Venta’s voice cracked with a powerful darkness. The masters tossed glances to one another. “He rescued her because he loved her. And because Jedi see love as unfit, much less to a Sith woman, he was found traitorous. That’s the horrid thing about you Jedi. You couldn’t see how powerful love really made him.”
Rayn had stiffened. Venta was forgetting gentle caressing into the information. She could have the truth put blatantly before her. Whether Rayn would accept it was up to her. Talking about this angered Venta, and the sooner the truth was told, the better she would be. “How would you know that?”
Venta’s yellow gaze locked onto Rayn’s firmly. Deliberately, she ignored Rayn’s question. She was asking to confirm her suspicions. There was no reason for Venta to confirm what was right before her eyes. “He ran away from you Jedi. He went back to that woman. Together they had children. Twins. One with a hot red flame sprouting from her head, and the other a shadow of everything her mother was. The red head was in a state of a handicap, the inability to use her arms.”
Panic flashed across the Padawan’s face with a confirmed, and horrid, realization. But still, Rayn sat before the chained Sith woman, holding her chin defiantly and swallowing hard while trying to retain a cool, calm composure. Venta could see easily through her disguise and it shredded her heart that horror was a feeling found in her beautiful blue eyes.
These wounds won’t seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase
“On some night nights she kept the Sith woman up throughout the twilight hours. She screamed in utter terror as utter pain lanced along the damaged nerves. She couldn’t give much comfort, and she regretted it under so cases. Ichigo could soothe it, but it would come back soon after he had exhausted himself. And by then the woman would always hold her daughter close and whisper sweet prayers that relief would be provided.
“But a year came to pass. And the woman’s dreams, that she had had two months before the birth of her children, were about to come true. The little girl with the curly copper hair had to go to the Jedi. It was for her greater good. With the Sith and the exiled Jedi, she didn’t stand a chance.
“So they chanced that trip to Coruscant, and that woman herself handed over her child. She cried leaving that meeting. She cried during that meeting. She cried days after that meeting. And to this day she cries.” Venta felt the burning now, behind her eyes and the hot streams down her cheeks. She felt Ichigo, so far away, reach out, alarmed by her sudden change of disposition in the Force, and he tried to comfort her. Venta shoved him back and closed herself down to him. She couldn’t have him finding out she was captured again. “But, for one so small, she incapacitated a Sith Lady. And she couldn’t be more proud. But… pride isn’t something you Jedi feel, is it?” Venta’s voice had gone from stubbornly strong to a delicate whisper that seemed ready to fade from existence.
“I’ve stalked you, Rayn. I will not deny it. That cold sensation you always felt touching you was me. It was me. I am a Sith Lady, and the dark side is what I thrive upon. That is why my touch seemed cold. I… I had to make sure you were all right. All the time.”
When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears
And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have all of me
Rayn’s gaze was now glassed over with a clear filament, as if she was trying not to cry herself. Her lip quivered once, her mind numb to this downpour of news. But then, the girl seemed to get a hold of herself. Her gaze returned to Venta. Suddenly, her head twisted back and forth vigorously.
“I don’t believe that. You’re a Sith. Of course you would feed me lies. You seek favor with the Jedi, so you attempt to brainwash us with this story.”
I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone
But though you're still with me
I've been alone all along
Venta sputtered once in disbelief, eyes widening and her jaw dropped. Had she just heard that from her own daughter’s lips? NO! It was the one thing that Venta had dreaded. Always and forever will she dread it now. Cold tendrils arched up against heart, welding a tight cage around it and sealing it with that fate of knowing her daughter didn’t accept her. She choked, watching as Rayn stood to her feet and turned sharply. Little stamps echoed after the fleeing Padawan, no doubt going to seek comfort from her master. The Jedi Masters by her quickly left to, shooting cold glares at the shocked Venta they left there. The energy crackled around her as the Force cage went up and the whirring was long and drawn out as the thick glass slid back into place.
Only then did Venta aloud that dreadful crack to part from her. A half scream followed in hot pursuit. Such agony! She rattled her shackles, letting lose everything she could in her confines, screaming until her throat was raw. And then she settled into a quiet cry about Rayn as she had so many times. She could sense Ichigo’s confusion and he did his best to project warmth through their bond and caress whatever pains Venta was suffering from. With the Force cage, Venta couldn’t work her way to block Ichigo as she had with just the cuffs. And so, she had to let him.
When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears
And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have all of me
Kind of... okay, pretty depressing. But it's a sad story that's suppose to move you. So, rawr, hate comments aren't allowed. I'm entitled to my sad stories every once in a while.
Inspired by the song by Evanescence. -wink-))
----
“You dared do it!”
The form before her twitched violently beneath her fingers. Wicked long fingers curled around the corner of his jaws, nails dug in until she seized the squeezing motion, leaving her nail embedded into his skin. Her thumbs lightly stroked the corners of his mouth, across his cheeks, and back again. She marveled in the exhilarating fear his presence projected, those once malevolent eyes turned wide and streaked with the pain and wide terror he felt. Her lips were turned into a feral snarl and amber orbs burned hatefully down at him. Faint wisps of violet lightning crackled and singed the air around them as she poured it into the man’s figure. Already she had brought him to his knees, allowing her the higher position to effectively torture him to the death. Already did angry crosses matching that of lightning’s appearance start to mount across his face. Already was any skin beginning to become a sooty ash. His bones started to liquefy, collapsing on themselves, withering him weaker. His mouth was agape in a silent scream of agony and he couldn’t move, pinned by Venta’s use of the Force as wave after wave of lightning simply wracked through his body.
“But, you won’t do it again. I shall make sure of that.”
“That’s enough, Sith.”
The voice was accompanied by the audible activation of a lightsaber and Venta’s awareness caught the sudden, attention wanting pound of another. She tore her nails from the wretched man’s face and turned, seeing an adult Jedi with his Padawan. Though the lightning had extinguished, she assaulted the man’s mind with her own, sending him into convulsing fits. And again, that presence body slammed her, surprising Venta so much her breath escaped from her mouth as if being kicked in the stomach. She detached herself from the man’s mind, feeling him fading quickly anyway. Her eyes riveted on the Padawan, noting the slam had come from her. A slight thing, small for her age, but probably coming of nearly fourteen. She had ginger hair, done up neatly with a few loose strands to frame her face. Ice blue eyes held disinterest as her Master called something of arrest toward Venta.
Venta felt her jaw suddenly tremble. The girl’s arms… they hung limply at her sides, the fingers slightly shriveled from the years of disuse. They were slightly undersized for even her small frame. Her eyes snapped back to the girl’s face, noting those now all to familiar eyes. The sudden name brushed from the Sith’s lips, shuddering as shaky breath was spent.
“Rayn?”
The girl’s widened in surprise, as did the Jedi Knight’s. That confirmed Venta’s suspicions. Rayn looked too much like her father now that she could identify her correctly.
“Rayn, incapacitate her NOW,” screamed the Jedi.
Rayn overcame her own surprise and bolstered the Force, driving a mental attack on Venta so strong she felt her gaze shift and her vision narrow. Audibly, for the first time in a long time, Venta gasped and actually stumbled, mentally unprepared and the psych was her greatest and favorite of weapons. A knife stabbed into her conscious mind and she suddenly found herself devoid of sight, her hearing fuzzy, smell cut off, and she was finally immobile by the third wave. Like a tree, Venta fell over, swallowed by forced unconsciousness.
I’m so tired of being here
Suppressed by all my childish fears
“What are you!” she screamed in confusion, brought about to the present once again. Her memory finished with its invasion. Her amber eyes had snapped open widened as she studied the monstrosity able to penetrate her mental defenses so and make Venta relive her flashback. Cool gray eyes met hers and his gray face remained all the more expressionless.
And if you have leave
I wish you would just leave
She was heavily guarded this time around. Deep within the Jedi Temple, shackled with cuffs of stun and cuffs that tinkered heavily on her ability to use the Force. A generator kicked in as the gray alien stepped back from her, and a yellow energy cage sucked away any little hope of using the Force. There was a hiss over the roar and an enhanced glass cage surrounded her over the energy field. Just beyond that, what Venta could see the Masters on duty take position outside the glass, and the professional studying Venta consulted the mind invading vermin.
Because your presence still lingers here
And it won’t me alone
Something red topped entered the room and Venta felt her heart flutter. Rayn. The girl Padawan would come and look at Venta, watching the professional as she talked to Rayn. Venta felt embarrassed by it, to be looked upon as some laboratory experiment by that of her flesh and bone. Memory after memory was bringing brought of anything remotely related to the Jedi Padawan. Once connected to the Jedi Master Ichigo, and that he was the father, he too had entered into the memory scans. Venta, mental strength spent on reliving those memories, hardly had enough brain power to even think why these Jedi down here wanted such information. Sure, Ichigo was a wanted man now, exiled because he loved Venta, and such love had gotten in the way during a battle of their factions. He had ended up rescuing Venta from the Jedi, getting her away and watching over her until she found the ability to run and hide like she always had. And so many times he had come to rescue her from the clutches of the Jedi, and was always crafty until a simple, unpredicted incident happened that had cost him the life he had known.
And then, they had twins. And Rayn, the gentle fair one of the two, was decided to be presented before the Jedi. It was as Venta had seen in her dreams. Rayn’s life as a Sith would have been miserable. Laniko, Rayn’s sister, made her way as a Gray Jedi with her father, both of them hidden from known galaxy.
These wounds won’t seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There’s just too much that time cannot erase
The decision of Rayn going to the Jedi was harder and more difficult to cope with on Venta’s part than it was Ichigo’s. This would make Rayn the enemy, and she would grow up to see the Sith as the enemy. But Venta could not see Rayn as the enemy. It was… it was unthinkable. Despite what so many Jedi claimed that the Sith felt nothing in their “heartless souls”, they were so very wrong. Venta had cried for so long over Rayn. When she understood Rayn’s disability at birth, she had cried. When the handicap caused needless pain for the girl, an itching sensation that mounted to a full burn that made Rayn as an infant scream in agony, Venta had cried, unable to soothe her child because her healing wasn’t like that of Ichigo’s. When Ichigo and her had snuck before the council with Rayn, the accusation that she would hurt her child made her mad with a rage that even Venta hadn’t been able to describe. And then, when she had left Rayn behind, for a week had she sobbed almost uncontrollably. Selfish… Venta was selfish. She knew it too. She just how selfish she was. She also understood the position of a mother.
When you cried I’d wipe away tears
When you scream I’d fight away all of your fears
I held your hand for all of these years
But you still have all of me
It was these drives as a selfish mother that Venta had learned to stalk her daughter. Yes, she followed her daughter from one part of the galaxy to another. When she couldn’t, she made sure there was a trail to follow when she could return her attention back to her daughter. Venta had been playing the role of a dark, shady guardian angel. Every danger that Venta found out before the Jedi Knight and his Padawan Venta had taken the liberty to remove that threat. She simply could not leave it up to fate whether or not her daughter might survive an encounter or not. If Venta could manipulate the future for the guarantee of Rayn’s safety, she would take it no matter what the risk. She couldn’t lose Rayn. If Venta lost Rayn… it made her tremble at the thought. Not Rayn. Not dear, sweet little Rayn.
You used to captivate me
By your resonating light
Now I’m bound by the life you left behind
The sound of the glass shielding pulling back away startled the Sith Lady. Her head jerked up, sending her matting black locks tossing across her shoulder. The whirring of the Force field stopped and the yellow strings of energy dropped. Venta found her mouth go suddenly dry when she saw who stepped up to greet her imprisoned person. The Masters stepped after the girl, capturing Venta’s mind with their presences to keep her from doing anything unpredictable. But not that she would do anything to Rayn, oh no.
She simply watched as Rayn sat down on her knees in front of Venta. Venta, who had risen to her knees, sat back on her feet and stared back almost as intently as Rayn stared at her. The girl’s brow was ruffled and puzzlement spattered her perfect blue eyes.
“How do you know so much of me? More importantly, why do you follow me?”
Your face it haunts
My once pleasant dreams
Venta continued to stare at Rayn. There were plenty of memories dragged out of Venta that related the young Padawan to the Sith Lady. Were they not telling her? Venta’s chin dropped a little and she shifted. The Masters tensed as if expecting Venta to attack Rayn, as she sat very close to the prisoner.
“They haven’t told you?”
“Tell me what? I know you are Sith. I know you follow me. Do you hope to take me and make me your apprentice? How do you know my father? Is he really my father? Do I have a sister? Did you do anything to them?”
How could she break this down for Rayn? Venta swallowed, rocking over the heels of her feet and sitting on her rump. Her legs folded into a cross. Rayn still sat on her knees, eyes boring, hungry for information she was not receiving from the professional.
“Why do you want to know?”
“You stupid Sith!” Rayn’s words stung Venta. “Because you know! Because I don’t! And they won’t tell me! I have to find out! I don’t know anything of my family, but time to time I feel something reach for me. Sometimes it’s cold and sometimes it’s warm. They are from different people. Who are they?”
[b[Your voice it chased away
All of the sanity left in me[/b]
Ichigo had to be the warm presence she felt stretching out to her from time to time. Foolish man. That would only bewilder and cause her to panic. At least Venta could offer an answer.
“Ichigo Kurisoki, that warmth you feel, is your father. Once a Jedi Master here at this Temple. He was charged as a traitor for rescuing a Sith woman during the war.”
Rayn scoffed. “Why would he do that?”
“Because he loved her.” Venta’s voice cracked with a powerful darkness. The masters tossed glances to one another. “He rescued her because he loved her. And because Jedi see love as unfit, much less to a Sith woman, he was found traitorous. That’s the horrid thing about you Jedi. You couldn’t see how powerful love really made him.”
Rayn had stiffened. Venta was forgetting gentle caressing into the information. She could have the truth put blatantly before her. Whether Rayn would accept it was up to her. Talking about this angered Venta, and the sooner the truth was told, the better she would be. “How would you know that?”
Venta’s yellow gaze locked onto Rayn’s firmly. Deliberately, she ignored Rayn’s question. She was asking to confirm her suspicions. There was no reason for Venta to confirm what was right before her eyes. “He ran away from you Jedi. He went back to that woman. Together they had children. Twins. One with a hot red flame sprouting from her head, and the other a shadow of everything her mother was. The red head was in a state of a handicap, the inability to use her arms.”
Panic flashed across the Padawan’s face with a confirmed, and horrid, realization. But still, Rayn sat before the chained Sith woman, holding her chin defiantly and swallowing hard while trying to retain a cool, calm composure. Venta could see easily through her disguise and it shredded her heart that horror was a feeling found in her beautiful blue eyes.
These wounds won’t seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase
“On some night nights she kept the Sith woman up throughout the twilight hours. She screamed in utter terror as utter pain lanced along the damaged nerves. She couldn’t give much comfort, and she regretted it under so cases. Ichigo could soothe it, but it would come back soon after he had exhausted himself. And by then the woman would always hold her daughter close and whisper sweet prayers that relief would be provided.
“But a year came to pass. And the woman’s dreams, that she had had two months before the birth of her children, were about to come true. The little girl with the curly copper hair had to go to the Jedi. It was for her greater good. With the Sith and the exiled Jedi, she didn’t stand a chance.
“So they chanced that trip to Coruscant, and that woman herself handed over her child. She cried leaving that meeting. She cried during that meeting. She cried days after that meeting. And to this day she cries.” Venta felt the burning now, behind her eyes and the hot streams down her cheeks. She felt Ichigo, so far away, reach out, alarmed by her sudden change of disposition in the Force, and he tried to comfort her. Venta shoved him back and closed herself down to him. She couldn’t have him finding out she was captured again. “But, for one so small, she incapacitated a Sith Lady. And she couldn’t be more proud. But… pride isn’t something you Jedi feel, is it?” Venta’s voice had gone from stubbornly strong to a delicate whisper that seemed ready to fade from existence.
“I’ve stalked you, Rayn. I will not deny it. That cold sensation you always felt touching you was me. It was me. I am a Sith Lady, and the dark side is what I thrive upon. That is why my touch seemed cold. I… I had to make sure you were all right. All the time.”
When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears
And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have all of me
Rayn’s gaze was now glassed over with a clear filament, as if she was trying not to cry herself. Her lip quivered once, her mind numb to this downpour of news. But then, the girl seemed to get a hold of herself. Her gaze returned to Venta. Suddenly, her head twisted back and forth vigorously.
“I don’t believe that. You’re a Sith. Of course you would feed me lies. You seek favor with the Jedi, so you attempt to brainwash us with this story.”
I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone
But though you're still with me
I've been alone all along
Venta sputtered once in disbelief, eyes widening and her jaw dropped. Had she just heard that from her own daughter’s lips? NO! It was the one thing that Venta had dreaded. Always and forever will she dread it now. Cold tendrils arched up against heart, welding a tight cage around it and sealing it with that fate of knowing her daughter didn’t accept her. She choked, watching as Rayn stood to her feet and turned sharply. Little stamps echoed after the fleeing Padawan, no doubt going to seek comfort from her master. The Jedi Masters by her quickly left to, shooting cold glares at the shocked Venta they left there. The energy crackled around her as the Force cage went up and the whirring was long and drawn out as the thick glass slid back into place.
Only then did Venta aloud that dreadful crack to part from her. A half scream followed in hot pursuit. Such agony! She rattled her shackles, letting lose everything she could in her confines, screaming until her throat was raw. And then she settled into a quiet cry about Rayn as she had so many times. She could sense Ichigo’s confusion and he did his best to project warmth through their bond and caress whatever pains Venta was suffering from. With the Force cage, Venta couldn’t work her way to block Ichigo as she had with just the cuffs. And so, she had to let him.
When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears
And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have all of me