[CW; trauma, wartime atrocities, poverty, death, mentions and possible depictions of genocide.]
She's still there.
The visions, if they can be called that, do not rage themselves into being, nor do they skulk like a snake in the grass waiting for a chance to take her sight. If only they had presented themselves as an enemy like that they could be the sort of thing she was taught to defeat, a pox on her mind from too much time spent mulling, the sort of thing the Masters warned her of; the laxness of the day giving way to darker thoughts, the result of a wayward, unguarded mind.
No. Instead, like a guest invited into her home, all it takes is for Meetra to simply blink before she realizes that she's there once again, surrounded by some of her closest friends and allies, each of them staring out the same viewing port and watching as the rest of her friends and allies died, crushed by the unbearable weight of a planet's gravity. One-by-one they suffered in agony, the countless seconds dragging on into the endless minutes and then, finally, an eternity of hours before the last soul on the planet was squelched, all communications silenced, every voice and echo of their life silenced. Only she and those sensitive enough to life on board the ship could have heard them. Those amongst them not touched by the Force were gifted with ignorance, only capable of watching from hundreds of thousands of miles away with nothing but their imagination.
The Republican soldiers had gone out first.
Then the Mandalorians, such is their way.
Last were the Jedi, as hard to kill as they were.
Once they'd all died, the planet was next. But by the time it began to howl and shake as its plates splintered and the continents cracked, Meetra had already turned, passing by Bao-Dur and out towards the elevator, leaving the sunken, broken wreckage of the Republic's fleets behind and the graveyard that she'd left in Malachor V's wake.
She hadn't stopped walking away for over ten years. A decade separates her from that place, and still it haunts her, and she lets it. Lets it burn into her mind, relives it day after day. The Outer Rim had done everything for her that it could -- more than she was willing to ever do for herself. It'd offered to give her a thousand new lives, new memories, friends and family.
And she chose to stay there.
In that place.
Listening to old, painful echoes.
Advanced-novella 18+, IRL genders irrelevant.
If anybody happens to be interested in me GMing a story where they take the role of the player character (Exile/Meetra Surik) in a retelling of Knights of the Old Republic 2 then I'd like for them to reach out. This is going to involve a lot of rewriting thanks to the troubled development of KOTOR 2 on top of just additional content I'd like to offer such as more planets, additional companion characters, more quests, more Kreia being Kreia, and Meetra being the shy, useless lesbian that I headcanon-borderline-canon that she is. I'll disclose a lot of what I plan to change with my players, but I'm going to ask for some mutual trust that the changes I don't disclose are good ones that will benefit the story and (your) experience. Thanks.
She's still there.
The visions, if they can be called that, do not rage themselves into being, nor do they skulk like a snake in the grass waiting for a chance to take her sight. If only they had presented themselves as an enemy like that they could be the sort of thing she was taught to defeat, a pox on her mind from too much time spent mulling, the sort of thing the Masters warned her of; the laxness of the day giving way to darker thoughts, the result of a wayward, unguarded mind.
No. Instead, like a guest invited into her home, all it takes is for Meetra to simply blink before she realizes that she's there once again, surrounded by some of her closest friends and allies, each of them staring out the same viewing port and watching as the rest of her friends and allies died, crushed by the unbearable weight of a planet's gravity. One-by-one they suffered in agony, the countless seconds dragging on into the endless minutes and then, finally, an eternity of hours before the last soul on the planet was squelched, all communications silenced, every voice and echo of their life silenced. Only she and those sensitive enough to life on board the ship could have heard them. Those amongst them not touched by the Force were gifted with ignorance, only capable of watching from hundreds of thousands of miles away with nothing but their imagination.
The Republican soldiers had gone out first.
Then the Mandalorians, such is their way.
Last were the Jedi, as hard to kill as they were.
Once they'd all died, the planet was next. But by the time it began to howl and shake as its plates splintered and the continents cracked, Meetra had already turned, passing by Bao-Dur and out towards the elevator, leaving the sunken, broken wreckage of the Republic's fleets behind and the graveyard that she'd left in Malachor V's wake.
She hadn't stopped walking away for over ten years. A decade separates her from that place, and still it haunts her, and she lets it. Lets it burn into her mind, relives it day after day. The Outer Rim had done everything for her that it could -- more than she was willing to ever do for herself. It'd offered to give her a thousand new lives, new memories, friends and family.
And she chose to stay there.
In that place.
Listening to old, painful echoes.
Advanced-novella 18+, IRL genders irrelevant.
If anybody happens to be interested in me GMing a story where they take the role of the player character (Exile/Meetra Surik) in a retelling of Knights of the Old Republic 2 then I'd like for them to reach out. This is going to involve a lot of rewriting thanks to the troubled development of KOTOR 2 on top of just additional content I'd like to offer such as more planets, additional companion characters, more quests, more Kreia being Kreia, and Meetra being the shy, useless lesbian that I headcanon-borderline-canon that she is. I'll disclose a lot of what I plan to change with my players, but I'm going to ask for some mutual trust that the changes I don't disclose are good ones that will benefit the story and (your) experience. Thanks.