revivalproject | What's going on in your head

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What's going on in your head

WHO: Kaz Brekker and Merrin
WHERE: Abandoned Temba store
WHAT: Kaz has asked Merrin to use the Force on him so he can learn how to resist it
WHEN: mid-August
WARNINGS: Okay this log will contain but warnings are not limited to; disease, death, graphic descriptions of decay, and corpses. If you don't like any of those, then please do not read this

There were many buildings in Temba that were already abandoned and finding one that was far enough away from any place that often had people going in and out wasn't difficult. It was as quiet and secluded here as if it was the middle of the forest, with the added bonus that rain would be kept mostly out by the cracked roof.

Kaz had sent coordinates (something he was learning made using maps easier) to Merrin already. He was dressed in black pants, a black waistcoat, and matching black cane and gloves. The only thing he was wearing that wasn't black was the white spider-silk shirt that Lark had made for him. For the record? He was not the least bit happy about the purpose of this arrangement but he also didn't want Force-sensitives, Jedi or otherwise, to be able to go sifting through his memories whenever they pleased.

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This particular building that Kaz sent her coordinates to wasn't familiar enough to Merrin that she wanted to teleport right into it, and so she teleports a little distance away instead and walks the rest of the way. She takes that opportunity to look around the area as she goes, mostly out of curiosity—but this place is certainly well-removed. Interesting choice. She's learning a whole lot about how Kaz thinks lately.

"Kaz Brekker," she says when she comes upon him inside—that's about what passes for a friendly greeting in her book. Other than having her hood pulled up, covering her hair and chin, she looks about the same as always, including her cool expression. She isn't the one having her mind invaded today, after all. "You are ready?"

That was enough of a greeting for him, especially since he often wouldn't even bother with that.

"Just a moment."

And then he proceeded to take off his gloves one at a time and put them away in a pants pocket. There was enough distance between him and Merrin there was very little danger of accidental touch and he knew himself well enough that just the act of putting on his gloves helped to calm him down. He was fairly sure he would be needing that piece of calm soon. He didn't quite understand how Force powers were meant to work, but since he was trying to learn how to block them from entering his mind, he first tried to think of a shiny shield that a knight would carry. He took a deep breath and looked Merrin in the eye.

"Alright."

He certainly does look determined—text made it difficult to judge that kind of thing, but now that they're in person, and she can see how his gaze unwaveringly meets hers... any qualms she might've had about doing this evaporate. After all, she's never actually performed this spell on someone who wasn't one of her sisters, as practice.

But he's serious. "Very well." So she pulls her talisman out of its pouch, cradling the halfmoon-shaped stone between her hands, and chants quietly in Dathomiri, the language harsh and guttural. Green ichor pours out of her talisman, casting the room in a sickly light and reflecting off of her eyes.

"Show me your thoughts," she demands, speaking in her voice but also with many voices underneath, distorted and echoing. The ichor engulfs Kaz in a thick smoke, and darkness enters his mind.

Whatever he had been imagining as a shield completely dissolved like wet paper under the green smoke of Merrin's onslaught.

The creaking steps of the Slat as he walked, cane making the same 'thunk' that often made the steps he took sound distinctive. Inej beside him, making various reports on the secrets she had gathered, her steps quieter than cat's paws. The Crow Club and Kaz shuffling a deck of cards with a level of dexterity that most people would never have. Jespers grin as he made Kaz actually laugh during their snowy trek through Fjerda.

But Kaz's mind would often turn dark, without any need from the prompting of Merrin's magic.

It had taken time to find him but when he did, Kaz had tied Phillip to a chair then beaten him bloody over and over again for 2 days. Then Kaz had slipped brass knuckles on over his gloves and proceeded to beat Phillip to death. And just before he died, Kaz shoved the key to a wind-up dog down Phillip's throat. Phillip had been 'the roper' to first make Jordi's acquaintance. The one to point him toward 'Jacob Hertzoon'. Thoughts of Hertzoon brought the icy burn of vengeance against him for what he'd done to them all those years before to the front of his mind. But those thoughts led to thoughts of his brother Jordi. Of one of his last memories of Jordi: eyes staring vacantly at the sky. The blooming sores that gave the fire pox its name sprayed up one side of his neck, and Kaz as a much younger child, laying his head against his dead brother's chest. Already it felt cold and hard.

Gasping, Kaz staggered back enough that he had to keep himself upright using his cane with his left hand, with his right hand to help hold him up against a wall. He had his eyes shut and was starting to feel himself shake. He did eventually catch his breath enough to speak.

"...again."

He opened his eyes, this time with something dark and feral showing in them when he looked her in the eye.

"Do it again."

It's true what she said to him—dark memories aren't new to her. She lived through the massacre of her people, listening to her sisters' cries and screams as they were cut down, walking among their bodies in the aftermath, their blood nearly black against the red sands of Dathomir. She buried each one of them, cleaning their bodies with oils, wrapping them in braided cloth, tucking them in to rest in their pods.

So the violence doesn't make her flinch, nor the bloodshed and death. But his vengeance—that's familiar to her too, and perhaps it's too familiar.

She gives him a moment to recover, ichor still swirling around the talisman she holds in her hands, taking the time to scrutinize him, eyes narrowed and gaze piercing. Now that she knows it's there, she can see the cold fury that drives him, right there in his eyes—it drove her too, once.

"If you are certain," she says, though she doesn't need him to answer to know that he is. Instead, more ichor pours from her talisman, enveloping him.

Kaz had time for another harsh breath and when he thought about a shield this time, it was an old and worn one with the metal showing at the edges through their leather covering. And this time it held. But it did not hold for very long.

Kaz had been nine years old now orphaned after his father's death and his brother was gone. They were supposed to be looking out for each other and Kaz had failed to do that. When he had laid his head on Jordi's dead chest Kaz had been certain he would be dead soon too and wake up again in heaven. Instead, he'd been awoken by a disorienting sense of tumbling when the Body Men had taken him for a corpse too and added him to the human heap of plague corpses on the Reapers Barge. Kaz had tried to yell that he was still alive, but he was too weak from the firepox to make enough of a sound for the Body Men to hear. Kaz had been buried alive under a pile of corpses. Digging himself not out of dirt, but cold flesh, decaying limbs, bellies distended from rot and staring sightless eyes. When he was able to take in a breath of air beyond the heap, he gagged on the stench of decay.

He had to dig himself out more but because he was already so weak, he had to lower himself down off the pile that had gathered where the Body Men dumped their grim cargo hand over hand, and each time was more and more frightening because more than once he'd tried to use a rotting limb to hang on to only for it to rip off of the body it had been attached to, or once when someone's forearm burst like rotten fruit all over him. He got off the initial pile but was still surrounded on every side by corpses. Corpses under his boots. Not even the air around them was breathable without the stench of decay. Kaz tried to breathe through his mouth but even then the air tasted like death.

When would the Body Men come back to burn the bodies? Would they come every other day, every two days? Kaz only knew it had been two days since he had been there and they hadn't come. By coincidence, he had ended up in the same few inches of standing water that Jordi's body was in. Kaz was waiting for death and on the second night, he looked across the Ketterdam harbor at the twinkling lights of the city. The only things for him there would be more cold and hunger. But as he looked at the city he knew that there was something else waiting there, too. Vengeance. But before that, he would have to get across the harbor and Kaz knew he was too weak to make the swim. But with Jordi's help, he would be able to float.

So Kaz pushed his dead brother's corpse over the side of the Reaper's Barge and jumped into icy cold seawater after. Then he kicked his legs as hard as he could manage and clung to Jordi's dead body as a raft. The slippery feeling of Jordi's skin where it had started to bloat made it hard to hold onto but Kaz forced himself to keep kicking his legs. When he did finally haul himself, shivering, onto a wooden dock the last time he saw Jordi was as a lifeless corpse, eyes open and staring despite the seawater.

This time it was worse. Kaz was visibly shaking, one hand curled into a fist against the wall and the other white-knuckling his cane. He wanted nothing more than to put his gloves back on and never take them off again. But he knew that if he did that, then all of this would have been for nothing. He felt like he couldn't catch his breath, so a single word came out between clenched teeth in a guttural growl.

"Again."

And this time when he looked at Merrin, that feral something had changed to an icy fire that simultaneously made his dark brown eyes seem as flat and black as a shark and as though he could burn the whole world with that look alone.

These thoughts are dark, deep, buried. In a way, familiar. Her sisters didn't die by disease, but through violence instead, their skin burnt and rent from blaster fire rather than bloated and diseased. But that cloying smell of death and decay and rot—she knows it well. The look of lifeless eyes and the feeling of cold skin.

Losing the person you love more than anything else in the world. Wishing for death to simply end it all.

She's breathing unsteadily when the memory ends, her talisman clenched so tightly in her hands that her knuckles are sharp underneath her skin. Her eyes are narrowed as she looks at him, gaze intense—but not unsympathetic. She has to force the tension from her grip, her hands lowering slightly.

"Sit," she says, and at first, there's that eerie echoing behind her voice. But it's gone when she says, "Catch your breath." And she takes her own advice, sitting cross-legged on the floor and taking a deep breath.

Edited 2021-08-28 22:32 (UTC)

Kaz used his cane to brace himself upright, but his right arm buckled until he was leaning against the wall. But despite the fact that he was visibly shaking and now coming to the point he was hyperventilating he was ruthless with himself on refusing to scoot down the wall enough to sit.

"If I stop now"-gasp-"I won't be able"-gasp-to do this again."-gasp

Kaz used his right hand to grab hold of his cane, that one now white-knuckled around the metal head.

"I told you" -gasp- "to be prepared" -gasp- "so fucking do it again" -gasp-

Something is clearly wrong here—why wouldn't it be? She's using her magick to force his thoughts open for her, to lay his mind bare so she could see his greatest pain, the darkest depths of his trauma and loss.

His will is considerable, she'll give him that. She can understand it, even—if their positions were reversed, and this was something she was determined to do, she can't say that she would give up easily either. She can understand his urgency too, that need to keep going and get it over with. But... his will and urgency will amount to nothing if he can't even stay standing. Or conscious.

"We are not stopping," she assures him—it would probably be more of an assurance if her tone wasn't so matter-of-fact. She raises her eyebrows pointedly. "Unless you think you stand better against me like this."

"I've got" -gasp- "nothing left to lose." -gasp-

Kaz was purposely keeping that horrific memory at the front of his mind and purposely denying himself from using anything that would calm his nerves. Because this was the real test. If anyone wanted to use what was his worst memory against him, then he had to choose to go there first.

Merrin used her magick again and once again there was the same compulsion in green smoke. But Kaz had learned from before what to expect. So this time, instead of imagining an object, Kaz only thought of metal. Strong and unbreakable, and just the substance of metal alone. Unlike the other times, this time the shield held.

It wasn't until the green smoke faded away that Kaz all but ripped his gloves out of his pocket and yanked them on. When he did that, his breathing started to ease enough that he was hyper-ventilating less. It was probably showing more weakness than he ever would with anyone else but Merrin had already seen him at his weakest point. So once he had his gloves on he slid down the wall enough to put his head between his knees, gloved hands holding his cane at two ends like a bar across the front of his legs.

She watches him for a moment, eyes still gleaming with reflected green light, as he puts his gloves back on—she supposes she has the answer to that question now—and sinks to the ground. While he catches his breath, she tucks her talisman away, now extinguished, and considers his last statement.

"You forget already, that I have seen your thoughts." It sounds almost... chiding, her head tipped slightly to the side. In fact, she would argue that he has quite a bit to lose—after all, before all that pain and suffering and death, she'd seen Inej at his side, and Jesper making him laugh. He'd seemed like a different person in that moment, not the man sitting in front of her right now.

Yes, it does. And though there isn't any real anger behind it and it's still muffled by his knees, Kaz responds to that part.

"Go fuck yourself."

The reply is so unexpected that it actually cracks her sabacc face and makes her smile with genuine amusement—the most outward emotion she's shown so far, congrats. She'll take that as a compliment.

"I'm afraid I cannot do that," she says, humor in her tone. Then she starts to remove her hood, pulling her cowl down around her neck. "You are feeling better?"

Well at least one of them is amused. Kaz does lift his head enough to speak clearly. He doesn't know what she's smiling about and for all Kaz knew she was making a mockery of him in her head. But as much as that might have irritated him at any other time, he was just too emotionally wrung out to care much about anything else right now.

"I don't feel like I'm about to blackout anymore, but I'm a hell of a long way from feeling 'better'."

Kaz closed his eyes and let his head rest against the wall behind him.

"I know that for this to work, it will have to happen again. I can't promise whatever you see in my head would be particularly pleasant but I don't have any worse as far as memories."

Any worse as far as memories... she nods her head in acknowledgement, now pulling her hood down from over her head. It's easy to believe—she still feels the imprint in her mind of those memories, the smell of death and decay, the press of cold skin. That's the center, the crux. The moment that changed him. She can tell.

"You don't have to promise. I told you before. Dark memories are not unfamiliar to me." Rather than just her normal, matter-of-fact tone, there's something a little deeper there. And a little curious, too. "Your revenge. Did you succeed?"

Kaz just says that both he and Jordie died that day but only one of them was reborn. Kaz had crawled out of the Ketterdam harbor with vengeance burning a hole in his heart. Now that hole had grown with Kaz into a dark doorway. One he knew that if he walked into fully, there would be none of him left. At times he did wish to walk into that dark doorway but sometimes, though rarely, someone else would pull him back from it. It had become Inej over time, and Kaz ruthlessly stopped himself from longing for her memory. The last thing he would ever want was Inej being trapped here too

his black eyes glittered while he let his head rest against the wall still.

"Oh. That will take his lifetime to see it through. But I've started it going."

Maybe it's because revenge has weighed so heavily on her mind recently, after finally learning the truth of her sisters' fate, but something about his answer settles over her uneasily, a line forming between her eyebrows. A part of her wishes desperately to have vengeance for her people, but... it's not possible. It will never be.

Which leaves her only with what she does now, without it. She almost envies Kaz that determination she sees in his eyes, that purpose.

"What will you do, once you have your revenge?"

He wasn't entirely sure what she was asking, now. Frowning to match he stooped resting his head against the wall.

"Why are you asking this?"

Because if Merrin had seen into his mind then she would already know that for Kaz there was no 'after'. His entire purpose for getting off the Reapers Barge that night was vengeance. His entire purpose in joining and then remaking the Dregs was vengeance. The end purpose for the reputation he had created for himself was vengeance. Years' worth of work all to serve the goal of vengeance. Put even more simply, though bleaker, his ultimate reason for getting out of bed in the morning was to see that vengeance through. Kaz was just 17, but many of his emotions were now being burned away thanks to his focus on vengeance.

Edited (fixed some repition) 2021-09-08 00:58 (UTC)

Yes, she was there, in his mind, but maybe some part of her is hoping that she just didn't see it. Not just the culmination of his revenge, but what comes after. It's the same question she's been asking of herself lately, which is why... she's asking it of him too.

She's quiet for a moment, turning her head away so that her hair obscures some of her face. When she speaks, it's measured, solemn. "Years ago, my sisters were murdered, and all I have thought about since then was avenging them.

"But here I have found out that the men responsible are both dead. So there is no one left for my revenge."

Ka was still puzzled about what Merrin was asking.

"The revenge game does get more complicated then."

He hedged cautiously, watching her just as warily.

She shakes her head with resignation. "No, it is simpler. I cannot have my revenge. Not against ghosts."

Dooku and Grievous are gone, cut down by the Jedi. The Separatists have fallen to the Empire, even if they ultimately played no part in the betrayal between master and apprentice that led to her people's massacre.

"I have no choice but to move forward." The problem is, she doesn't know how. Kaz still has something to hold onto: his anger and pain and vengeance, honed for purpose. What is she supposed to do with hers? It's building up inside her and she has nowhere to release it.

That was the problem with vengeance, it had a way of consuming the victim that lived for vengeance alone until there was nothing left of them. And once it was fulfilled, what then? That, perhaps, is why Kaz's own quest for revenge has made him realize that simply killing someone is not real revenge. He's realized that emotional pain is far more effective and instead lets his vengeance play out more slowly, making someone suffer over and over again during a person's natural lifetime.

That still left the same question, though. What do you do without that vengeance? Kaz certainly couldn't say for sure but he said what seemed to make sense at that moment;

"I don't know if you're telling me something or asking me something, but seeing your life from another person's point of view is how you find that way forward when you can't find it for yourself."

Honestly, she's not sure if she's telling him something or asking him something either. It's just that—in looking through his thoughts, she'd seen something they shared, something that reflected back at her and the questions she'd been asking of herself lately.

And Kaz would understand. What it's like to live your life for vengeance. Not even Cal does, for all that they have in common.

A look of dawning understanding crosses her face, and she nods her head. "Yes, you are right." It's exactly how she found a way forward before, after all. Then she stands, wiping dust from the back of her tunic, her expression a little softer, more thoughtful.

"You will need more practice. Tell me when you are ready."

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What's going on in your head

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Doing 1 tag cuz I've been jazzed for this log <3

<3 <3 cw: suicidal thoughts

cw: graphic description of a panic attack

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