With an encouraging half smile, Face stood and began clearing the table as the siblings moved to the more comfortable chairs in the main room and popped the datacards into their datapads.
Sylvana was impressed with the thoroughness of the data Sci had collected on the two of them, yet was left with a feeling of violation. It was bad enough she had the feeling someone was watching her every move, but now she knew that privacy was not quite as present as she might have liked.
Being, secretly, a very private person; this information, to put it simply, rubbed her very wrong. Her frown deepened as she focused on the other data only just now made available to her.
The information on how Alison Sky had died fit perfectly with the vivid nightmares that had plagued her for so long. It was as though she had been a camera in that very hallway.
She shook her head in disbelief as she was able to draw a direct parallel between the newer mythic dreams, and the events following the rest of the team back on Terra.
Sylvana sat back a moment as she pondered what all this could mean, then started violently as one of the visions in the previous night's dreams hit her like a Star Destroyer falling on a baby Ewok.
A cold room. White clad figures. A strange weapon shooting blue bolts at an increasingly familiar figure..
He fights against the pain. Venomous words are exchanged. He jumps up unexpectedly, rushing at his assailant, his hand coming away at an odd angle. Yet, he continues on, only to fall away as something tears through him, blood appearing on his clothing as he slumps to fall on the ground...
She jumped up, dropping the datapad to the chair, and began to pace the room, fairly wringing her hands as her mind raced. "Oh no, this is bad. This is so very very much bad." she muttered to herself throughout her pacing. "Bad doesn't even describe just how high the badness of this is!" she whimpered, her brows drawing together and upward in her distress.
Her hands then balled into fists, and she suddenly found herself looking around for something to hit. Enough sense broke through, that she only went for a high backed chair, rather than one of the walls. These walls weren't the soft drywall back home, but something much stronger, something that would likely shatter her hand. She couldn't have bacta, and thus couldn't afford to break anything just now.
Not now!
As her fist slammed the back of the chair against the wall, she let out a shouted growl. "ARRAUGH, SITHSPIT!" One fist then the other, again and again, pummeling the conforming chair and leaving knuckle prints in the upholstery, pressing the stitches into her left hand.
After a full minute, she bent and put either hand on an arm of the chair, gripping until her knuckles went white. "And there's not one blessed thing I can do about it," she muttered.
Feeling eyes on her, she whirled around and glared at those left in the room. Face stood there motionless, obviously wondering what was wrong, but not sure if he should ask. Arrek looked at her worriedly from where he was sat, then set his datapad down and began to move toward her.
"What is it, Sis?"
"Everything," she growled, causing her brother to step back cautiously. She turned to Face. "There's a gym nearby, correct? With a pool?"
"Two hallways down, take a left, then at the next take a right. You can't miss it." He moved forward questioningly, placing himself between the young woman and the door. "'Vanni, what's wrong? Is there anything we can do?"
She nodded curtly, "Stay away from me. Just leave me alone, there's no way to change what has probably already happened."
"But-" Arrek began.
Sylvana disappeared into her room, then reemerged with a towel and swimsuit deathgripped in her right hand.
"Maybe I should-" her brother started again.
"Alone ," she repeated dangerously.
She pushed past Face and left the room, calling over her shoulder. "I'll be back in plenty of time to see Master Skywalker."
Once the door had closed behind her, she sprinted down the halls as though running away from the images in her mind.
Blue bolts....
She passed the first hallway.
Broken wrist....
She ran faster, skidding around the corner and running swiftly past a few of the residents, leaving them behind wondering why she ran so.
She reached the pool's female changing rooms and swiftly changed into her silver single-strapped swimsuit. She dropped her towel on the floor as she ran to the pool, then dove in.
Blood....
Swimming as an otter along the very bottom, she tried to focus. She swam quickly, the tiles blurring beneath her as she darted beneath the few others in the pool, weaving through as though they were an elaborate obstacle course. She reached the end of the pool, and darted around, going back the way she had come.
An increasingly familiar figure....
She slipped around human and alien alike as though she were simply their shadows, only the current left in her wake noted her passing.
It wasn't long before she reached the end she dived in from, and she darted around again. Who is it? I know you, -please-, come into focus for me, she silently pleaded the spectre.
The air began to burn in her lungs, warning her it was high time for her to emerge for a breath. As she broke the surface, the face in her mind became sharp as a monowire blade.
Brad Corletti.
She pulled herself up over the side without a word to the curious looks she received, and grabbed the towel she'd brought. She returned to the changing room and ducked beneath a clear shower, using the provided soaps to wash away the chlorine. She'd have to replace her bandages, but that didn't matter. If she could help it, she wouldn't have wrapped them at all, letting the air get at them.
Thoughtlessly, she took them off, tossing them into the recycler. As the cool water beat down upon her, she could see that she had healed considerably overnight. As a doctor, she knew that she was healing more quickly than was typical, and someone with her wounds shouldn't be able to have the stitches removed for weeks.
At the rate she was going, they'd be out in the next day or so.
She shook her head resignedly and stepped out of the shower. After changing back into the borrowed flightsuit, which had only been worn a short while, she left, with her swimsuit and towel in a small bag, to take a good long walk.
But she never left the building. Sylvana didn't even leave the floor.
Someone she'd met was in terrible danger, and she couldn't do a single thing. Somehow, she was certain that even Sci wouldn't be able to get in touch with the others. Even if he could, what could they possibly do? And what would she tell them, that she'd seen one of their teammates being tortured with blue electricity, than shot in a cold metallic place? That she couldn't even tell whether he was alive or not, only that he'd been shot, and had fallen to the ground to lay still?
So lost in thought was she, the young doctor never even noticed the watched feeling she'd borne so long. She never even felt the eyes of her sad, living shadow.
As she passed for the thirteenth time, Sylvana palmed the door open and tossed the bag of wet swimsuit and towel into the main room she'd stormed out from earlier, palming it shut again almost immediately. She hadn't gone much further along the hallway of that level when she, almost literally, ran into Major Klivian.
"Sylvana, I was just coming by to-" he trailed off as she scowled at him before pushing past on her way. Obviously confused, he turned and began to follow her. "Wait!"
She kept walking as though she hadn't heard him.
"Sylvana!" He jogged up to intercept her, causing her to stop short and fold her arms as she glared at him.
"What is it, Major Klivian?"
"Uhm, I... I was coming by to see how you were doing. Wes said--"
"Wes says a lot of things," she broke in with a frown.
Hobbie continued. "...That you'd been hurt pretty badly."
"Yeah, so? Not like it was lethal."
"Could have been," he said quietly as he stepped closer.
She stepped back away from him. "Is there anything else you want with me, sir, or may I be on my way?"
Hobbie blinked in speechless surprise.
Sylvana nodded curtly. "Good day."
As she turned away, he got this sudden feeling if he let her go now, it was the end. His hand shot out to her shoulder, and she froze. "Syl, please. I don't understand what you're so angry about."
Her hands balled into fists as she spun around. "Sure, you could tell Sci, but you couldn't tell me? We've been penpals for nigh on three years now, I would think we were closer than that."
The confusion on his face only magnified. "Tell Sci what, Sylvana? Just what in Hoth are you talking about? I don't understand what--"
"Oh don't give me that, 'I don't unerstand!' Nerfsith, Klivian. You know exactly what's going on here. You told Sci that you suspect I'm not Terran, but Lorrdian instead, but you don't voice it to me? What, you don't think I'm worthy of that knowledge? Sure, I understand you not telling me how Alisky died, I was still a civilian and that was classified. I respect that. What I don't appreciate is practically everyone knows, or thinks, I'm not native to Terra, and NOT ONE PERSON voices that speculation to me."
"Sylvana, I--"
She held up a finger, cutting him off. "I'm not finished. I had a right to know if my own heritage was in question and subsequently being kept from me. Did you think I wouldn't be able to handle it? Well, you were so very wrong. AND to top it all off, it looks like some pretty awful stuff is going on back there, and there's not one blasted bloody thing I can do about it!" She let out a long frustrated sigh to punctuate things.
They stared at eachother a few moments in silence, he in puzzlement, she in frustrated anger. Then, with a crisp salute, which he returned automatically, she spun and left, stalking back to the borrowed quarters. She would have slammed the door if she could, but she contented herself with stalking to her room, locking the door, and laying on the bed to stare at the ceiling.
It would never do to meet Master Skywalker like this. He'd likely go on about the Dark Side or somesuch thing.
Blowing out a long sigh, she sat up on the bed, taking calming breaths, and forcing herself to meditate her spirit down to a kinder level.
Hobbie found himself unable to say anything, and just stood there shaking his head dumbfoundedly to himself. He jumped startledly as a hand lay itself heavily on his shoulder.
He turned to see the Watcher, Fes, standing there with a deep frown.
"You should have known better, Klivian," he said quietly. He shook his head as he dropped his hand. "You should have said something."
He said no more, and soon was gone as suddenly as he had come.
With a long sigh of his own, Hobbie hung his head, shaking it slightly, then looked up and headed back toward his own quarters on base.
"If she ever finds out what else is being kept from her, I'm going to be in deep."