Chapter Text
Who are you?
In the silence, in the dark nook at the rear of her quarters, lying fully clothed and wide eyed on her bed, Trin kept returning to those words. Now the bustle and noise of the night was gone, she couldn't push them out of her mind. She'd heard them - really, actually heard them, as if they were in her head. And she'd felt something, a sensation at once familiar and foreign. A closeness with someone unseen.
The image of the silver haired young man and the blasted, black landscape returned to her mind's eye.
The voice had to be connected to the vision. Was it his? It had sounded female though.
Two visions, both times when she had reached out with the Force to make contact with places beyond the ones she could see and touch. Was this going to happen every time she used the Force in that way? That was a scary thought.
She needed to know: were the visions under her control? And where was the place she was being taken? Whose eyes was she seeing through and were they also the voice in her head?
She lay still on her bed, and let the Force in, felt it within her, in the room around her, and beyond-
-She was lying on her side, head propped up on one elbow. The bed below her was hard, but her body was used to it. A few inches away was a large window and outside of that, a void, dark and vast, a starless space filled with shadows and a ghostly light from above that caught the edges of hulking machinery.
Oh god and stars. Again.
Trin heard her words, her voice, made with a thought instead of lips and mouth.
Her body was thrown bolt upright and she could feel her heart - the heart in the body she inhabited - pounding.
"The fuck?" her mouth hissed, and there was a sudden, disorienting rush of unfamiliar surroundings through her vision, leaving her looking at a tiny room, dimly lit by a small light source set into the wall.
Where am I?
Her hand made a gesture and a ceiling light snapped on. The room was utilitarian to the extreme, seemingly constructed from one piece of glazed and polished ferrocrete, with a door of plain unpainted metal. There was a mirror on one wall and some paper stuck to the other. Was it a prison?
She - the body she inhabited but had no control over - jumped out of the bed to stand in the middle of the floor. It turned, and she found herself looking at an unfamiliar figure in the mirror.
A girl in black underwear, tall and skinny, ivory skin taut over tensed, stringy muscles. Fierce dark eyes stared out from a pale face framed by tangled black hair.
"Go away," the girl hissed, her voice dripping in fear or fury or both.
- And Trin was back in her room, lying on the bed. Senses and mind still reeling.
—
Aestra paced the room, which in practice meant turning in tight circles, which made her feel doubly trapped; physically in this tiny room and mentally trapped in this bizarre, fucked up situation that in the space of a single day had gotten completely out of control.
She stopped circling.
She had to make contact again. Find out who the fuck this was, whether they had any idea what was going on, how to stop it, who they were. Anything. She needed to get on top of this and know more instead of sitting back and waiting for it to happen again.
She sat on the side of the bed, took a breath and tried to calm herself. That felt like it might take until morning, so she just went for it, still fizzing; she drew the Force into herself, sensed it within and around her, reached out to the world above her and the creatures that walked its surface-
- Lying in semi-darkness on a bed. A bed that was much larger and softer than hers. The white stone walls and ceiling of the room were close, surrounding her in a tight, intimate space. To her left was an arch, leading to a larger, better lit room.
The body she was in sat up abruptly.
"Are you there?" the words came from her mouth, loud and unexpected, reverberating around the rooms.
I'm here.
A lack of mouth and vocal cords didn't seem to get in the way of her thinking the words aloud.
Was that you just now?
"Yes, that was me. Are you the girl with black hair? I saw you in the mirror."
Right. So, earlier, you were in a bar? With a human guy, Mirialan girl?
"Yes! I knew it. I heard you. How long were you with me?"
Just seconds. Both times it's only been seconds. I saw through your eyes - I was in you - when you were outside, and there were mountains. That was hours ago. Then in the bar.
"It's been three times for me. You were in a room and there were things on shelves. Then you were on the surface of a planet, and there was a guy with silver hair. And just now, in your room."
What the fuck is going on?
"I wish I knew." Whoever this was, she sounded like Aestra felt: a mix of excited, confused and scared.
Where are you?
"Tython. You?"
She should be cautious; the colony survived on secrecy.
A long way from you. An old mining colony on the outer rim.
Work some truth into the lie. That would match almost everything the girl might see, unless she caught her with a lightsaber, or saw Xate, or that walking cliche Tor. Good job she'd taken down her Anakin poster.
What's your name?
"Trin. What's yours?"
Her first impulse was to lie, but why bother?
Aestra.
-And she was back in her room, lying in her bed.
Aestra stared up at the ceiling panels, wide eyed, mind racing. The situation felt dangerous; it was out of her control. The girl might suddenly be with her, seeing through her eyes, at any time, which meant there was a risk to the colony. And she was on Tython of all places; the world had a strong Jedi history. Maybe the girl knew Jedi, or would go running to them if she saw any evidence of darksiders.
She groaned and held her head in her hands. Not the kind of complication she needed ever, and particularly not right now, when Inferna's visit and the last moves in the campaign for ascension were imminent.
But, what did Bane say? "Honor is a fool's prize." Not that, the other thing: "The strong never stop seeking victory." Or something like that. There were risks, but also opportunities. Maybe she could nose around and see what the Jedi were doing on Tython via this girl, Trin. If she played it right, perhaps she could get some valuable intelligence.
Plus, the brief glimpses she'd had of life on Tython looked... pretty cool. She'd lived her life in a series of shit holes of one kind or another, so the idea of experiencing someplace less shit was quite appealing. That bed had been really damn soft. That bar and those people had been straight out of holos - not the grim ones about nightsisters and Korriban anchorites, but the silly, frothy ones about glam young things living it up in the Core.
Enough! She was Sith, or would be soon, and cared not for the kind of decadent pampering that such weaklings needed to live.
Bet her dinners were incredible though.
Aestra waved off the light and lay down, though she knew that sleep wasn't going to come for some time. Risks and opportunities around every corner. Life had just gotten a bit more complicated.
—
Trin lay awake on her bed. What did this mean? Why had the Force joined the two of them? She wanted to know more about this strange girl with furious eyes.