Room 414, Tuesday Morning

[suitably_heroic]

Mental fingers in his mind. Poking, prodding harder than anyone had managed in years. It hurt, cutting through layers and layers of cold, thick armor like it was flimsi. Emotions gushed out like coolant from a broken valve.

"You're Force-sensitive," she whispered. "You know what the Sith do to Force-sensitives, don't you--?"

"Get out of my head!"

Then it was her lifeblood spilling out onto his hands. An eye for an eye-- except it didn't work that way any more-- hurting her felt like hurting himself, and what had she done to him?

"You need to run."

Atton woke up with pearls of sweat running down his forehead, sticking his hair to his head at odd angles. He reached up and brushed at it with the back of his hand, muttered a curse under his breath. He stumbled out of bed two minutes later, grabbing his pants and his stack of pazaak cards, and yanked open the door to let cooler air in.

It didn't really help.

He snagged his towel off the floor and sank down behind the desk, tossing his cards onto the wooden surface. "Opening game," he muttered under his breath, "pick your deck-- plus one, plus two..."

(You're really doing this? For me? What is wrong with you?)

The cards calmed him. Shut his brain back tight. That was better.

[[ post is open, door is open ]]