Everything's Not Lost, [Locked] Shay & Lysander

[Shay Marin]

Shay was legendary amongst the Order for her patience, a resource she possessed in amounts far exceeding the norm even from a Jedi perspective. While it had been originally cultivated--along with her sense of humor--as a defense against her former Master's pranking ways, this character trait had served her well throughout her years of service. Today that patience had been tried to the limit, and had ultimately splintered under the strain. The rush in her step as she exited the stairwell and headed down one of the dormitory corridors was uncharacteristic of her normal behavior. Then again, these were far from normal circumstances.

They hadn't let her see him. Even Gandon had been unwilling to listen to her pleas. The Council had thought it was important for them to gauge Knight Odakota's state of mind before he could be 'unduly influenced' by anyone else's point of view on his actions. To say Shay disagreed with this would be a severe understatement. Frack the Council right up a kriffing tree. My best friend just came back from performing one of the most difficult things a Jedi could ever have to do, and they drag him in front of a flaming board of inquiry and question him as though he were the one in the wrong! The rational part of the newly-minted Jedi Master understood the Council's reasoning, but the greater part of her refused to accept isolating Lysander as anything resembling necessary.

From a distance, she'd been able to feel the agony her 'little brother' endured during his initial debriefing. The bond between them went deep enough that she couldn't have ignored his pain even if she'd wanted to. Shay had wanted to offer some kind of telepathic reassurance, but she'd been quite firmly told off by her former Master against doing so. Anything that resembled 'interference' on her part would not be looked upon kindly by the other Council members, and might result in sanctions being placed on both herself and Lysander. Gandon had sympathized with her intentions, but he'd had no hesitation about pulling rank on her to get her to hold off on that plan.

However, now the interrogations were over, the Council adjourned to deliberate what further action needed to be taken, if any. As soon as Master Marin had been able to pull herself away from the training class she'd been roped into teaching, she had made her way with all due haste towards the living quarters in the temple. It was easy enough for her to know he was there, bonded as they were. All she had to do was follow the 'tug' on her spirit towards his.

Shay wasn't certain Lysander knew she was approaching, given the amount of anguish he was currently enduring. He certainly hadn't sent any sort of recognition 'ping' towards her along the bond, which either meant he was unaware or that he was deliberately attempting to ignore her. If he were trying the latter... well, she thought Lysander ought to know better than that by now. Shay was as persistent a woman as she was patient, if not more so. There's no way I'm going to leave him alone, I don't care if that's what he thinks he wants. I'm his big sister, dammit.

Her features set in determined lines, the Dolomarian Jedi came to a stop outside the door to Lysander's quarters. She didn't bother messing with the door controls, seeing it as ultimately pointless. If the lock was engaged, it would serve no purpose; if the lock was not engaged, Shay didn't want to just barge in on her little brother. Instead, she gave a quiet knock on the metal door. The two of them didn't need such things in order to make their presence known to the other, but when you spent so much time apart from your fellow Jedi you fell into certain habits. ::It's me, Ly...:: Shay projected into her best friend's mind. ::Let me in.:: She wasn't just talking about him opening the door right now.

[Lysander Odakota]

Numb. That was the only word that could possibly describe his mental state at the moment. Lysander could barely function on the mental level. The anguish riding in his gut made anything semblance of calm seem entirely out of reach. Every thought that he attempted to create ended up just coming back around to one person. Grahnt.

He had failed him, completely and terribly, and that had cost Grahnt his life. The reaction of the Council made it clear that he’d screwed up. He couldn’t pinpoint where he’d gone wrong in the last few years with the young man, but clearly he’d done something. Grahnt had never trusted him, not really. Grahnt had been right to despise him--this was the second Padawan of Knight Odakota gone the way of premature death.

He buried himself even further into his simple bed, wanting to sink into it and never surface again, even as the vivid mental images and senses of his final fight with his late-Padawan flitting through his ravaged mind. He’d spent the last two hours in front of the Council reliving those moments aloud, as well as the last four years he’d spent attempting to train the apprentice who had gone wayward in the end. Having his mind picked apart by those men and women of the Council... it was the worst thing he could have anticipated on his return home.

So numb as he was, he was completely oblivious to the pulses that he normally would have been keen on through his Force bond with Shay. He felt nothing but his own emotional agony--an agony so strong not even the best of his training could steel him against it. Nothing was worse than having to eliminate someone you had come to care about deeply. Nothing.

He felt both betrayed as well as a traitor within himself. Grahnt had hurt him, forced his hand in eliminating him by choosing to leave the Order as he had. But Grahnt wouldn’t have left and gone darkside if Lysander had been more... vigilant. He had seen that notion in the eyes of the Council members. He’d felt it in the darkness that threatened to suffocate him even now.

He was stuck in this mental circle, running through the same phrases and words and scenarios in his mind and nothing, it seemed, could break him from it. He was spiraling, and fast. Something in the normally dutiful Guardian had broken when he’d off’d his own apprentice, and the Council’s words had done nothing to fix it.

The soft knock on the door was the first thing that broke him out of his mental fall. It took him a brief moment to realize that it was Shay he was feeling so strongly just outside his quarters. Her concern flooded him, her words flitting across his mind.

Suddenly he found himself holding back tears. He’d not cried since he was a kid and hadn’t cried about Grahnt at all yet. He hadn’t thought he would. But the sensation of his worried ‘big sister’ softened something that would allow for it. Nonetheless, even as he rolled off the bed and walked to the door, he held back the emotional outbreak, the numb sensation coming in handy for something.

He pressed his palm to the pad that would open the door. It slid open silently, letting Shay see into the dark room. There was no lights on in the room--the only light came from the digital chrono at his bedside and a datapad glowing faintly at his bedside.

He stared blankly at Shay for the moment. Now that the door was open, he was torn between just closing it again or collapsing into Shay’s likely willing arms. He didn’t know what he wanted. No. He knew what he wanted. He wanted this over with. Or to have never happened. Something that would eliminate this pain. He didn’t want it to be now anymore.

[Shay Marin]

The expression on Lysander's face broke Shay's heart to see. Her chest ached with sympathy pain as their eyes met in the dim light. He simply looked so very lost right now, something she'd never thought her 'little brother' would ever be. He'd always been so sure of his path ever since he was a child, in a way she had envied on occasion during their youth. The death of Ly's first Padawan had shaken him to the core, made him hesitate at times, but he'd never lost sight of the road before him. But now there were two Padawans dead, one by the Jedi Knight's own hand, and the ground beneath his feet was no longer so solid as it had been before.

Silent as a shadow, Shay stepped into the room, one hand rising to Lysander's shoulder and gently nudging him backwards in order to get them both out of the sight of any potential passers by. Once she'd cleared the threshold, she extended a hand off to the side and toggled the door control, sliding the metal panel shut behind her. She left the lights turned off for now; with Force senses, there was no need for physical sight to find your way around, after all. Still, Master Marin found Lysander's choice to sit in the darkness with his thoughts to be rather ominous a sign as far as his mental state went.

For Lysander's sake, she'd kept up the pretense of decorum while out in a public location. After they had some measure of privacy, such concerns were promptly tossed out the metaphorical airlock. Both her arms proceeded to wrap around his chest tightly, pulling her not-so-little-anymore brother close against her. If he tried to break out of the embrace, he'd find himself with a serious fight on his hands. Shay wasn't about to let him go for anything other than the most dire of emergencies. To her mind, he needed this, needed to know he had someone's unquestioning and unconditional support.

Shay's cheek came to rest against her brother's, her skin rasping against the stubble the normally clean-shaven Jedi had not thought to deal with before returning home. Not that Shay blamed him for this minor lapse; niggling personal hygiene details weren't about to be on someone's mind after they'd slain their student. "I'm here, Lysander," she whispered in his ear, her tone husky with shared emotion. "I'm here for you. You're not alone." There were no other words to be said; all the depths of love and compassion she felt for her best friend resonated along their bond, making further speech unnecessary at the moment.

[Lysander Odakota]

The light from outside was cut off as Shay shut the door. He’d stepped back enough to let her in, not having the heart or the will in him to prevent her even he’d decided he wanted to continue to sulk in his own misery alone. But now she was here, alone with him, his only anchor to a world he was debating abandoning.

He took her embrace at first, but did not respond to it, standing there as if he couldn’t comprehend what she was doing. He stared at the door as it was lit faintly by the glow from his bedside, blue in tone.

Then her words reached his mind.

"I'm here, Lysander. I'm here for you. You're not alone."

His arms came up, reaching around her neck to hold her as close as she’d come, his face burying into her shoulder. He could say nothing, and when he attempted to voice his thanks and his pain at the same time, all he managed was a anguished whimper against her neck, his fingers tightening into his own arms where they had locked around her. Again he could feel the tears burning at his eyes as he shut them.

It felt good, though, to have her here. A physical being he could touch and assure himself that he wasn’t alone. The first steps of healing could only come when he felt assured that he wasn’t rejected by or fighting the entire world. This was the beginning of that. Some part of him had known that Shay would be the one to come find him and relief washed over him now that she had.

He tried to thank her again, hoping to get past the break in his own voice, but this time he failed even more and simply broke down, caught between his deepening sense of relief and the gut sensation of anguish. He couldn’t stop from crying, the notion foreign to him in so many ways but oddly welcome in this moment. With Shay, he knew it was safe to cry, to feel sorrow for his lost Padawan and for all that had come after.

[Shay Marin]

The sound of Lysander's anguished whimper brought a lump to Shay's throat. She tried to hug him all the tighter for it, as though some part of her believed she could protect the man from his pain if she only held him close enough. Not that he actually needed any protecting; Ly was a grown man, and a Jedi Knight besides. That didn't matter so much, however; he'd always be her little brother, and she'd always be there to defend him, guide him, comfort him... whatever it took. The Council was lucky they hadn't given her another assignment at present, because she was in no mood to do their bidding for a change. Other Investigators could do her work, but only she could do this for Lysander.

She didn't need words to know he was thankful for her presence. The bond was enough. Her own voice was giving her considerable difficulty at present, so she chose to return to conveying her thoughts and feelings across their spiritual link. In many contexts, love was a highly dangerous emotion, but at present it was precisely what she needed to give him. Let less 'eccentric' Jedi talk about purging one's self of grief through meditation and self-denial; Shay knew better. Lysander didn't need a Jedi Master right now, but his best friend.

When her little brother started to cry, Shay's own emotional controls immediately started to slip out of her already tenuous grip. She hadn't seen him cry in years... decades even. Not since they were both children, in fact. Weeping wasn't a behavior Jedi indulged in as a general rule. It was far too visible a sign of one of those negative emotions they avoided so strenuously. Shay herself hadn't cried--outside of one of her acting 'gigs' during an undercover mission--since right after her Knighthood trials. Those tears had sprung from mixed joy and relief, though; they didn't compare to the sorrowful torrent coming from Lysander now.

The Dolomarian Jedi squeezed her own eyes shut tightly as they started to burn. A sister's sympathy and a Jedi's Force empathy worked against Shay's belated attempt to stem the tide, however. They were too close on too many levels for her to be able to hold back her own response to his suffering. Soon she couldn't prevent the moisture from seeping past her eyelids and sliding down her cheeks. Like Lysander, she found it impossible to stop crying once she'd started.

Deciding her efforts would be better spent on trying to soothe her little brother than seeing to her own composure, Shay just let herself cry. Her hands rubbed slowly up and down Lysander's back in a maternal sort of gesture, as a mother would try to calm down her child. She'd picked up on the habit of mothering her friend back when they were far younger, when the five year difference between their ages had meant a lot more. "Shhhh... you'll get through this, Ly-Ly," she murmured, her breath shaky due to her own sobbing. "I know you will."

[Lysander Odakota]

"Shhhh... you'll get through this, Ly-Ly. I know you will."

Together they cried, Shay’s shared sorrow somehow comforting to the Knight. Knowing she was here and he wasn’t alone in his pain made him feel better. Not that he aimed to drag Shay down with him, but he knew that wasn’t the case anyways. She didn’t regret her tears any more than he regretted his. Those tears could help wash this away, put it down river and behind them as they moved forward up the ever difficult upriver track.

He took Shay’s words as fact, knowing she would never sugarcoat this fact for him. If she said that he was going to make it through this, he simply would. Of course, the light still felt so far off and it was hard for him to know how he was going to make it exactly, but he put his full trust in her. He nodded tightly to her words, despite the fact that even that movement as unnecessary, their bond so complete that she would know he accepted her words instantly.

Eventually the crying slowed and he found himself with only the occasional tears left, the movement of Shay’s hands having calmed him sufficiently and the initial torrent over with. He’d released a lot of what had been killing him from the inside out and that proved to be good enough for now.

He found his voice, though he felt weak and tired--moreso than he had in a long time. “I need to sit down,” he managed to say, his voice slightly raspy from the tears and with a hint of a break, though not bad enough to stop his words. With that he was releasing the intensity of his hold on her, wiping at his eyes with the back of one hand even as he thought blindly that the bed was the only real place to sit down in here. Jedi quarters weren’t exactly lavish.

[Shay Marin]

Master Marin wasn't sure how long they stood there, holding eachother and crying in the dark. Time didn't have any real meaning to Shay at present, so focused as she was on assuaging her little brother's pain. Nothing else mattered to her more than that right now. They shared these moments without shame, joined by friendship and mutual grief. For now they would set their status as Jedi aside; for now, they would be merely human.

The worst part about this whole mess from her perspective was how damned powerless she felt. There was nothing she could have done to have prevented this tragedy, and there was even less she could do to draw the Council's censure away from him now. For Lysander's sake, Shay would have gladly taken the burden upon herself if she could. Given the opportunity to switch places with him this instant, she'd have done so without hesitation, if only so he would not have to suffer anymore. He didn't deserve what had happened to him. It wasn't fracking fair.

"I need to sit down."

Shay gave a small nod of assent, unwinding her arms from around him. The fact he was able to speak again was a good sign in her eyes. The strength to pull himself out of the dark hole of despair he had fallen into existed within him, Shay knew without question. The problem therefore lay in convincing Lysander of that fact. He had to believe in himself again, or he'd never recover. Shay would not accept that possibility. Her little brother had to get better; she loved him too much to allow otherwise.

"Alright, c'mon then," she murmured, a hand on his back urging the man on with gentle pressure towards the bed he had recently vacated. She took a seat beside him on the edge, wrapping one arm around his lower back, leaning her shoulder against his. With a slight flick of the fingers on her free hand, Shay switched on the bedside lamp with a telekinetic touch. The gesture was both practical and symbolic; she didn't want her little brother dwelling in the darkness any longer.

"They wouldn't let me see you." A deep frown creased the skin between her brows and at the corners of her mouth. "I'd have been at your side from the moment you came back home otherwise. I'm so sorry, little brother." Her arm gave his midsection a quick squeeze. "I wish I could give you better words, because those sound so empty... but they're the best I have." What in the galaxy could you say to someone who'd killed their own student out of necessity? What eloquent speeches could you hope to come up with that would make sense of the situation? Nothing, that's what.

"It wasn't your fault, dammit." Shay knew full well the paths Lysander's mind would travel as a result of his actions. The two of them were much alike in their willingness to castigate themselves when events went south around them, regardless of whether or not they were actually at fault. As the saying went, a Jedi accepts responsibility, they don't assign blame. "Grahnt's failure was his own doing, Ly. He fell all on his own, through his own choices. His choices, not yours."

[Lysander Odakota]

They sat down together, Shay sticking close, right at his side with a firm arm around his waist to keep him grounded. She knew as well as he did to abandon touch completely right now would only be counterproductive. He needed to know, without a doubt at all, that she was right there. Any further away and he might have panicked and drawn back into himself and his misery yet again.

His eyes flickered slightly as his pupils contracted in response to the sudden light. For a moment, the sensation was invasive--the darkness had allowed him to wallow in a way that the light would never allow. But he knew that was the point and wouldn’t protest Shay’s wise action of shedding some light on them. On him, more specifically. Withdrawing into the physical darkness made withdrawing into the more symbolic darkness all that much easier.

"They wouldn't let me see you. I'd have been at your side from the moment you came back home otherwise. I'm so sorry, little brother. I wish I could give you better words, because those sound so empty... but they're the best I have."

As she spoke he sunk slightly so he could rest his head on her shoulder without moving away from her at all. She was the steady rock in this sea of turmoil and he would cling to her until he was ready to stand on his own and accept that the waves weren’t going to drown him. Swimming back to shore was a hard ordeal and he’d never make it if he didn’t believe he could first.

He knew she would have done anything she could have for him. No, it wasn’t her fault that the Council had wanted Lysander fresh and unaltered from his bout with Grahnt. Shay would have changed his heart if she’d had a chance to see him first, just as she was doing now. The Council couldn’t have gauged his reaction properly if Shay had gotten to him first. Didn’t make it any easier to swallow, though. The Council had seen him at his very, very worst, and for the first time he truly feared their judgment. He could barely remember what he’d said and he was sure some of it had been incriminating in some way, despite his best intentions as a Jedi and a teacher. He’d been imperfect, though, and in ways that were likely inexcusable given how events had played out.

"It wasn't your fault, dammit. Grahnt's failure was his own doing, Ly. He fell all on his own, through his own choices. His choices, not yours."

Lysander had turned his head, his forehead now buried against his ‘big sister’s’ shoulder, eyes closed tight as one hand rested on her leg and the other rested behind her. Her words made sense. They were true and he knew that in his deepest feelings. But that didn’t stop the rock in his gut from existing.

“There still should have been something I could have done. Something... something. Shay. He couldn’t have possibly been so far gone...”

Grahnt’s history had been an interesting one. His first Master had picked the boy up when he was twelve. Said Master had died in an off world conflict not a year later, and that was when Lysander had been called in as the calvary. Things had seemed to go well at first, but between Grahnt’s issues with the death of his initial Master and Lysander’s own fear of losing a second Padawan, things had compounded. Four years later, things were officially... over. Grahnt had joined his first Master in the flows of the Force--dead as one tends to be when their mortal beings ceased.

“He wasn’t a lost cause when I took him on. But I lost him anyways.” He swallowed hard, trying to quell his sudden buzz of fear he felt as he spoke these words aloud. Fear wasn’t a good sign, and he knew Shay would feel it on his spirit. He was afraid this situation would continue to compound even without Grahnt here. He was afraid of being a lost cause to the Order himself. He didn’t know what he’d do with himself if the Council really decided he’d done some ill and the mantle of Jedi could not longer be his to bear.

[Shay Marin]

"There still should have been something I could have done. Something... something, Shay. He couldn’t have possibly been so far gone..."

The arm around Lysander's back tightened protectively as he lamented his Padawan's fate. She had expected this from her friend, that he would seek to find the fault in himself rather than in Grahnt. He was too kind a soul to do otherwise. "He was that far gone," Shay asserted quietly. "If he hadn't been, he would have come back when you called him towards the light again." The Jedi Master didn't need to have been present at the final confrontation between student and teacher to know what her little brother would have tried to do.

Turning her own head, Shay dropped a motherly kiss on the top of Lysander's head, like she used to do for him when he was a toddler. "There will always be something you could have done differently, said differently, chosen differently. Even Jedi aren't perfect. We can and do make mistakes." It never ceased to amaze Shay how much of the galaxy took the Jedi stereotype at face value. She knew full well about all the stories regarding her kind--good and bad--and how just about all of them missed the point entirely. When it came right down to it, Jedi were people, not droids with Force powers. Others would understand the 'religious fanatics' far better if they'd take that simple fact into account.

"However, no theoretical mistake on your part could ever have justified what he did. All those people... he killed them, Lysander, not you. He chose to run rather than face up to his crimes." The Order could forgive many sins, but hiding from the consequences of your actions was not one of them. "Your fear of losing another Padawan didn't make him commit murder." As much as Shay loved her little brother, she wasn't about to tiptoe around the real issue here. She knew he'd been afraid, but she also knew he'd never chosen to act on that fear. He'd taken on the burden of another student without hesitation despite how his first Padawan had died on his watch.

"He wasn’t a lost cause when I took him on. But I lost him anyways."

"Oh, Ly-Ly," she breathed sorrowfully, dropping her cheek to rest against his hair. Lysander was bound and determined to be as harsh on himself as humanly possible, it seemed. "You didn't lose him, not like that. He lost himself. Those lectures we got growing up about how corruptive the Dark Side is? They're all true, every word." Shay had been called upon to track down other 'lost' Jedi before, so she'd gotten to see the evidence of that particular truth of the universe first hand. "Grahnt willingly gave himself over to it, or at least wasn't strong enough to resist it. From that point onwards, the Grahnt we knew was lost. He was long gone before you were forced to kill the thing walking around in his body, playing at being him."

Oh, sure, put it in ghoulish terms like that why don't you? You're supposed to be comforting him here, sister, not reminding him of what went wrong. Still, Lysander didn't need anyone to coddle him, not even his big sister. "Please, don't do this to yourself. You'll drive yourself crazy if you try to pick through every circumstance in the past four years trying to figure out what magic words you should have said when and how in order to keep him from falling. There weren't any." If only there were magic words I could use to convince you of that, she lamented internally.

Shay knew Lysander's fear as sharply as if it were her own. Her stomach roiled with nausea from the shared emotion. She also knew what Lysander was afraid of this time around. "The Council won't do that to you, little brother. They won't punish you for something that isn't your fault." At least, they shouldn't do that, but as she'd said before Jedi weren't perfect. It was possible those who sat on the Council might choose to blame Knight Odakota for what his Padawan had done, if only because it was always easier to be able to point the finger at someone in specific, rather than question the Order's methods in general. Master Marin had faith that wouldn't happen, though; Gandon was a member of the Council, after all, and he never tolerated that sort of garbage from his peers.

[Lysander Odakota]

"He was that far gone. If he hadn't been, he would have come back when you called him towards the light again."

Shay, of course, was correct about how things had gone down in the final confrontation. The idea that Lysander would do anything but try and redeem his student until the very last moment was laughable... or would have been, had there been anything even remotely humorous to be found in this situation. He’d not reduced himself to begging in an effort to get the Padawan back into the fold, but he’d been tempted to at the very least. Pleading would have gotten him nowhere, though. Not when Grahnt had taken to so openly accusing Lysander of being wrong. On a personal level, even. Grahnt had known where to hurt his master and had done his best, lashing out at Lysander personally in his final moments, and not just the Order as a general rule. Lysander hadn’t just killed his student. Lysander had killed his student who had personally reviled and despised him.

”Even Jedi aren't perfect. We can and do make mistakes."

With that reminder fresh on the air, Lysander couldn’t help but wonder... had he made a mistake in killing Grahnt? The act wasn’t what he questioned now--no, Grahnt had become a threat and had had to be eliminated, for the sake of the Order--but he questioned the reasoning he’d had in the moment he’d buried his burning blade into that young chest. Had he been so hurt that killing Grahnt had become... personal? That was dangerous ground, so bordering on revenge that he knew it wouldn’t be good.

No, no, he hadn’t done this out of hate for Grahnt. He’d done it out of love. He knew that and attempted to re-reassure himself of such a fact. But now that it occurred to him that he might have given into baser emotions... Had it been Grahnt’s final hope that he’d take Lysander down with him? Surely the boy had known he was dead when Lysander had shown up. Grahnt had known Lysander’s power and hadn’t done all that much in trying to escape...

Now he was just playing with thoughts and paths he did not wish to continue to tread. Forcefully, he pulled himself off that track. Yes, Jedi made mistakes. But that was one mistake Lysander had to convince himself he hadn’t made. For his sanity, he needed to know he was still in control of his own heart.

"Your fear of losing another Padawan didn't make him commit murder."

No, not when she put it that way, his actions and fears hadn’t made Grahnt do anything. He hadn’t forced Grahnt’s hand in anything whatsoever. Murder wasn’t any proper answer to someone else’s indecision. But at the same time, that didn’t mean Lysander’s underlying hesitance hadn’t in some way influenced the course of events. He should have done better. Could have done better. Losing Holee should not have been precursor to his losing Grahnt, but it had been. Even years laser, her death was reverberating in Lysander’s life, unresting buildings of faith and conviction that should have been sure.

And now that Grahnt was gone... where did the guilt for the deaths of those people come to rest? In some cases, the bodies weren’t yet even buried or cremated, so fresh those deaths were. Grahnt’s death couldn’t possibly have settled their cases, made their deaths... okay. Could it have? And if not, who was going to make it so?

Lysander still felt as if something had been left undone and his soul would suffer for it until it was fixed. For the life of him, though, he didn’t know what would happen to fix this. He couldn’t bring them back. He couldn’t even force and apology from the now dead Padawan. Would the murders of all those people in cold blood come back to haunt him as well? How many deaths did he have to have on his hands before it became a personal stigma? Or was it a stigma already and that was why he was losing it here and now because he was finally realizing it?

”He lost himself. Those lectures we got growing up about how corruptive the Dark Side is? They're all true, every word."

He knew she knew from experience, and now, he did too. He’d never thought the corruption he’d seen go on in Grahnt's eyes was possible until he’d witnessed it first hand. To go so completely and utterly into such darkness without any obvious slip... There had always been little things, but until mass murder had been committed, nothing solid had been there to pin a fall. How long ago, truly, had Grahnt fallen?

They were all susceptible to the Dark Side. Especially among Force Users in the Order, where power was had so readily, one had to be prepared to walk a very carefully painted line or risk losing everything. There was a reason it was called a “fall” from the light. One misplaced foot...

Maybe Grahnt would get his wish. Maybe he’d tripped up his master, good and proper on this one. He felt his gut clench with that thought. He’d remained silent as Shay had spoken but now he pulled away from her slightly, whispering tightly, “I don’t want to follow him,” expressing vocally that trepidation he felt at the idea.

”He was long gone before you were forced to kill the thing walking around in his body, playing at being him."

“Yes, you’re right,” he muttered. The words Shay had spoken were disturbing, but true. No, Grahnt hadn’t been Grahnt in... some time. Sick with the idea, he drew back a little more, not even conscious he was doing so, his hands moving away from her, the only one keeping them in contact being Shay now. If that thing that had taken over Grahnt was going to take Lysander down, he wasn’t going to bring Shay with him. If that was going to be his only saving grace, he wasn’t going to take his sister with him to the deep end of darkness.

"Please, don't do this to yourself. You'll drive yourself crazy if you try to pick through every circumstance in the past four years trying to figure out what magic words you should have said when and how in order to keep him from falling. There weren't any."

Weren’t any then. Weren’t any now. He was semi-conscious of the fact that he was officially letting himself give into despair at this moment, but there didn’t seem to be anything to be done for it. This dark side in him had him by the throat now. One hand of ill-will holding him tight. He was scared of what the second hand would do if he stopped struggling, but some more perverse side was interested to find out.

Stop it, he berated himself, eyes going steely. You do yourself so much ill thinking foolish thoughts like that. He was better than this. With Shay... couldn’t he pull past anything?

"The Council won't do that to you, little brother. They won't punish you for something that isn't your fault."

He turned his head away from her then, focusing his eyes on the wall away from her. “No, they won’t punish me for something I didn’t do,” he agreed, but his voice was tight and clearly carefully controlled as he said it. “But that doesn’t eliminate the fact that maybe... maybe I have done something to deserve their scorn and disappointment. This... this way I’ve reacted. Doesn’t this prove something?”

Jedi weren’t supposed to react. They were to act, rationally, and not give into emotion of any sort, let alone this sickening despair. All of this was clearly the former and not the latter. Even Shay could not deny that, nor would she, if he knew her right. Though in this state of mind, maybe he’d lost his read on her, too, just as he had on himself.

[Shay Marin]

"I don’t want to follow him."

A sinking feeling took up residence in Shay's gut at these words. Never before had Lysander vocalized even the vaguest possibility that he might fall to the Dark Side. His commitment to the Light had always been steadfast. For him to show such doubt now meant her little brother was treading on exceedingly dangerous ground. "You won't, Ly," she reassured her friend in a firm tone, doing her best to convince the both of them with the truth of her words. "You're better than that, smarter than that. Don't..." Shay swallowed hard past the sudden tightness in her throat. "Don't even think about doing that."

"Yes, you’re right."

Lysander might have been agreeing with her verbally, but physically he was pulling away. The arm wrapped around Lysander's waist tightened its grip. As he slid further along the edge of the bed, she followed after him, refusing to let him leave her side. She wasn't about to let him pull a retreat back into the pit of the despair she had found him in when she entered the room. By the Force, I will drag him kicking and screaming out of the shadows if I have to. The dark can't have him, I won't let it happen.

The words she had spoken earlier came back to haunt her. Truth be told, there was nothing she could say or do to prevent Lysander from falling from the path of the Jedi, if that was what he ultimately chose to do. To think otherwise would be to commit as much of a logical fallacy as Lysander's own belief that he was responsible for Grahnt's fall. At best, she could serve as a guidepost along the way, or a lantern lighting the road ahead. If he stumbled, she'd try to pick him back up again, so long as he didn't stray too far.

"But that doesn’t eliminate the fact that maybe... maybe I have done something to deserve their scorn and disappointment. This... this way I’ve reacted. Doesn’t this prove something?"

I wish he was still small enough for me to pull him onto my lap, cuddle him close, and reassure him that everything would be okay. But he wasn't, would never be again, and everything wasn't okay. Shay was inherently a pragmatic Jedi, one who took the universe for what it was rather than what she wished it to be. As much as she loved the man besides her, she recognized he was not without flaw. She knew this loss of control on Lysander's part was wrong, though not for the reasons her little brother thought.

"Yes, it does prove something." Her voice came only after a long pause, and then as a bare whisper. Shay turned her torso towards the man beside her, sliding her free arm around his chest to hug him close, resting her cheek on his shoulder. "It proves you're human. It proves you loved him." Master Marin had had to kill many people in many different circumstances over the past two decades of serving as an Investigator for the Order. However, she had never been called upon to terminate someone she cared for, and for that she was incredibly grateful. Seeing what it had done to Lysander made her sick at heart.

"Listen to me, Lysander... I know you don't want to right now, but you have to, dammit." Instinctively Shay pulled her little brother still closer yet, further restraining him from his attempted escape. "I'm going to tell you a little secret, something a lot of the mainstreamers would probably want to hang me for." Lifting her head, she fixed Lysander's profile with an intense amber stare. "It's alright to be afraid... and it's alright to hurt, and to grieve, and to regret, and even to rage. It's not the emotions themselves that are the real problem... it's when you act on them that you commit a wrong. You can't ignore your feelings, but at the same time you can't let them control you."

A quiet sigh escaped her, barely audible, though her voice remained calm and even. "Like you're doing now. Little brother, I love you. You know that. You know I'd never lead you astray. You have to stop this, Ly-Ly. I can help you... but you have to want to stop it. You have to let it go, before the fear of falling pulls you down."

[Lysander Odakota]

"Yes, it does prove something. It proves you're human. It proves you loved him."

Lysander didn’t even realize he’d tried to pull away until that moment when Shay was wrapping him back in an embrace and he discovered that he was straining subconsciously against her. Both physically and emotionally, he was already resisting her touch. The dull ache in his chest grew tighter, urging him even further to flee this situation. He couldn’t handle it, couldn’t Shay see that? Yes, he was human, yes, he had loved Grahnt, but all of that was a moot point when it came down the fact that he was scared out of his mind and wished for nothing more than to find someplace where demons could not be found or discussed.

"I'm going to tell you a little secret, something a lot of the mainstreamers would probably want to hang me for. It's alright to be afraid... and it's alright to hurt, and to grieve, and to regret, and even to rage. It's not the emotions themselves that are the real problem... it's when you act on them that you commit a wrong. You can't ignore your feelings, but at the same time you can't let them control you."

As she spoke, Shay’s grip on him tightened and he knew that he could not get away from her without a literal fight. And even in the state he was in, the Guardian hadn’t the heart to lash out at the woman who held him. She meant only the best for him and even as he sought to reject her comfort and her words, he could not deny either of them--not truly.

She was right. The mainstreamers would have had her head. There was no emotion... there was only peace. That’s what they would have said, and in many rights, that would have been true. But no, Shay was saying that while there was emotion, peace could come with it. Control. That was the key. Either way you looked at it, however, right now Lysander was stomping on the Code and had put it behind him for this breakdown. Could it be recovered? Did he want to go through the effort of pulling himself back together?

A whimper of anguish choked him again.

"Like you're doing now. Little brother, I love you. You know that. You know I'd never lead you astray. You have to stop this, Ly-Ly. I can help you... but you have to want to stop it. You have to let it go, before the fear of falling pulls you down."

His self-betrayal full realize in that moment. No, Shay couldn’t lead him astray--never had, never would. Distraught as he was, he had to let this go. He couldn’t let his own fall become a self-fulfilled prophecy of sorts. Believe he would fall and he would. That was just how it worked.

For the second time today he dissolved into tears, he strain against Shay’s embrace breaking as he sought her shoulder to bury himself back into. Though he had said nothing, it was at least clear Shay was getting through to him. Through their bond, no words were necessary for Shay to know he was coming back around. He wasn’t in the clear, but magical words or not, Shay had known what to say.

[Shay Marin]

Making Lysander cry again was one of the last things Shay had wanted to do. Yet, despite her heartache at the sound of his sobs, she knew this to be a hopeful sign. She'd managed to force a crack in his self-constructed wall of doubt and depression, letting in the first hint of the light of reason. The Jedi Master wasn't so naive or idealistic as to think her 'mission' here would be accomplished so easily as that; one didn't step back from a brush with the Dark Side in an instant, free and clear. Shay knew that from her own personal experiences. Still, Lysander's response was an encouraging development.

As the Guardian made to bury his head against the Sentinel's shoulder again, one of Shay's hands came up and began to stroke over his hair soothingly. It had been a long time since she'd had reason to try to comfort her adoptive sibling in such a manner... not since his age had been in the single digits, if she recalled correctly. While Jedi children were still children when it came right down to it, they did learn to restrain their more blatant emotional displays from a very young age.

Force knew she'd never tried to comfort anyone else this way. She'd been a somewhat reclusive child herself, weighed down with the burden of her bloody heritage. There had been few friends in her world growing up, and Lysander had been more important than the rest of them put together. Even during her playacting out of her various roles, Shay rarely got herself maneuvered into anything resembling a 'close' relationship with one of the people she was manipulating. The few times when she'd had no choice in the matter if she'd wanted to accomplish her mission, she'd always found the circumstances faintly... well, distasteful.

"I'm here, Lysander," she repeated her earlier words, just barely managing to hold back her own reciprocal tears this time. "I won't let the dark have you." Her arm tightened around him impulsively again. "I need you." Some might find it strange that the woman who was doing the comforting would say such a thing to the man being comforted, but in the context of their friendship it made perfect sense. Her link to her little brother was one of the things that no doubt kept her sane during her long absences from the Order. As much as he looked up to her at times, she never wanted to let him down.

Without consciously intending on it, Shay found herself setting up a gentle rocking motion between them. It just seemed like the thing to do, so she went with it. "You're so important to me... you know that, right?" Not that she thought Lysander truly doubted her, but she hoped making him reinforce the sentiment would help him rebuild some of his shattered confidence.