Ask Nar Shaddaa The Addiction

[Jez Winters]

[fancybox2]

NAR SHADAA
Midnight Hours

@FoxTamerAlexis ; @Taz [/fancybox2]

The air was ripe with the smell of regret. Thick clouds of smoke pillowed out a window in a rundown looking building. The stench of burning spice drifted wherever the wind could carry it. It was far better than the stench of anything else down here in the pits of Nar Shaddaa. Bathing wasn't exactly a necessity, nor was any other sign of personal hygiene. Down here in the drug pits, there wasn't exactly a need for such trivial things. And anyone who had the credits to spend on them anyways typically used the coin for other more leisurely activities. One such person, was Jez Winters. Oh how far she'd fallen.

After the death of her master she was kidnapped by a mercenary who sold her for profit. But not before hooking the poor girl onto the ever addictive drug commonly known as spice. By the time the buyer realized his 'product' was hooked on the substance it was already too late. Jez was useless to him. Naturally, he tried to kill her off. And Jez almost let it happen. But the Force had other plans for her and one thing led to another and now here she was ruining what was left of her live in a drug pit. She'd finally gotten the life she wanted for herself: partying, drugs, sex. And look where it landed her. The Knight of Ren once known as Xetno was buried so deep not a soul would recognize her.

The girl who was once a striking beauty was now closer resembled to a delinquent low-life. She'd shaved half her head, dyed the other part blood red, then got matching tattoos of the same color all over her body. This included her face as she couldn't stand to look at the person she had once been. Further deforming herself she also got a few piercings to be sure that Xetno would be no more. This was Jez's way of forgetting about her long lost master and the horror of her captivity. The weakness she displayed. The feelings of helplessness and grief. Jez was done with that. And where her mind could block out the memories no more, the spice was there to close off the rest.

It was in the early early hours or the morning, or late night in this case as Jez had stayed up all night drinking. She wandered into a common den of hers and found an empty space in the back. She closed the curtain so others would leave her alone (the only doors were the front entrance and a back way for quick escapes). She then plopped herself on the dusty and possibly pest-infected couch and injected herself with tonight's score. The world faded away from her and everything became a whirl of color and blurs.

 

[Castus Shan]

How had he found himself here. The Hutt's moon was always a cesspool. Full of gambling dens, casinos, fighting pits and slave auctions. But somehow he had managed to find himself in what was the ass crack of space.

So here he was. Drifting in the alleyways like the fog of spice smoke that resonated between the buildings. He had no intentions, no ideas or plans. He was just drifting. Moving about the brain blown addicts in the throws of their spice haze. Careless to their plight or troubles. He was not here for them.

Castus was free of his Master, free of the yoke of his control and training. Free to find a pupal of his own, if he so wished. Not that he expected to find such a person in this place. But the force, and especially the dark side, guided him to strange places. Unexpectedly taking him where he needs to be

That thought was no more accurate, when he stumbled on the feeling of hopelessness and emptiness. The human Sith followed the feeling. Tracking the emotions like fresh blood on the street. It guided him deeper into the pits. Down into a hole within a building and deeper still.

There, in the corner of a room of other spice addicts laid a young woman who seemed to appear far from an undercover cultist. Yet he could feel the dark side coming off her in shallow waves.

 

[Jez Winters]

In a normal day, Jez would have been able to foresee the danger coming her way. It wasn't often a Dark sider came into contact with one another. And in her experience...they weren't very friendly. Had Jez been more in control of her senses she would have gotten up and ran the moment that Castus' boots walked in the door. Sadly, her head was in the clouds at this moment. When the curtain moved aside and she saw a blur of a person standing there, she stared him down for a good minute.

"Can I help you....You're ruining my high."

She hoped it was just some strung out junkie not realizing she was there. If not, well...she'd find out how quickly she could get up and punch the fool in his lip. She'd been itching for a fight for awhile now. And her anger was like a volcano inside her, ready to erupt at any moment.

 

[Castus Shan]

Castus stood over her, watching her. In her current state she was open and defenseless to him. Her mind and emotions laid bare to him in the dark connection they both shared with the force. Her body made almost no movement other then to suddenly open her glassed over eyes and look at him. Or rather struggle to look at him.

When she spoke she tried to seem irritated, perhaps even angered. But the drugs in her system drained away any hint of intimidation she might of had. Instead her appearance was more akin to a stray dog hit by a speeder and looking for a place to lay down and dye. She was not a wounded animal. But rather a broken one.

"What a sad little creature. How does one become such a creature, so broken, so pathetic"

He did not expect her to answer, hell he didn't even expect her to move. Rather he forced his way into her drugged out mind to gain his answer. She would be far to high on spice to do anything to push him out or wall him off. She would be angry, he could feel it. But She also seem to be on enough spice to put a Hutt on his ass.

 

[Jez Winters]

"Oh screw you," she mumbled back.

In her mind he'd see loss. Grief. Despair. The girl had lost her master and from there gone into a downworld spiral of addiction. First alcohol. Then intimate interactions. Sometimes both. And finally drugs. When the three intermingled it only got worse until Jez was the woman he saw now trying to enjoy her most recent high.

Unaware her mind was being read, the girl's anger pushed her up from the couch. She shakily got to her feet and went forward to approach the man intruding on her privacy. She had every intention of choking the life out of him with her bare hands. However, her body was in no such condition. She got no more than a step when that reality came crashing down. Her legs failed her and she reached outwards to catch herself on anything; the only thing in her grasp was the curtail separating the two. It gave way as she pulled it and she crashed on the floor by the man's boots.

With a groan the girl squirmed and rolled onto her side. She was too strung out to figure out why she'd fallen or why the world was spinning. The curtain tangled about her kept her from pushing it away from her. A normal person could figure it out, but Jez wasn't in the greatest mindset.

 

[Castus Shan]

Castus let the force guide him. Let it carry him like a strong river current, passing through her mind. The fog of her spice gave way to thoughts and visions of the recent past. Visions of a white haired male, another Sith. He could feel loss. He could feel her emotions, the pain and suffering of torture and of mental and emotional breakdown. Then training. Of rebuilding and shaping. Castus could feel the attachment, the loyalty and affection built within.

Then came the loss, pain and suffering. He could feel how it broke her to her very core. Adding to the loss were was a confrontation with a bounty hunter. This caused a downward spiral. In that spiral he could see just how far she had fallen. And then he pulled back, JUST to see how far she had fallen.

"Yes, I can see that is your go to payment plan." He retorted, amused. Then used the boot she almost kissed to push her on the shoulder the rest of the way on her back. Looking down at her he continued, "If you are done making a fool of yourself ?"

 

[Jez Winters]

Jez would groan at the sound of him condescendingly talking down to her. She struggled some more with the curtain and managed to get both her arms free; the cloth was still tangled in between her legs. Looking up at him she blinked several times. Her vision was still blurry. She'd already forgotten who this person was, and why she was lying at his feet. For a moment, there was only one explanation.

"...Master?"

He'd come back. He'd come back for her! Back from the dead! .......the dead? Wait. No. That wasn't right. Jez groaned and rubbed at her forehead while matting her hair into more of a mess. "No. You can't be...him. He's dead. You're dead! Leave me alone!"

Now Jez was talking to him like he was some form of apparition. A ghost of her memory coming to haunt her. Jez would have none of it. She rolled back over -away from him- and started kicking at the curtain to get it untangled from her legs. With her back to him she started crawling her way back to the couch where Castus first saw her.

"Go away. Leave me alone to suffer."

 

[Castus Shan]

Castus stood there looking on. Watching both in he force within her mind and with his own eyes. He knew of such weakness in more common average people, but never in one connected to the force. Not even Jedi. Her connection to his man, this Sin, had shattered her to the very core. Then cracked the core as well. What was left was hardly a person. Let alone a Sith.

He ignored her demands. Rather then leave her alone he used the force to take the curtain and use it to blind the drugged out woman. She didn't struggle much. The last of her strength used to struggle with the curtain in the first place. So he used it to break her will. What little was left. Then when we was done with her he carried what was left of her back to the ship.

What the drugs didn't annihilate, Castus would use the force to assist him burning out or twisting her memories. More of an illusion then really cutting out her memories. But it would work for this damaged head case. When he was done he let the medical droid take over.

The droid would put in a couple of bacta iv lines. Then start to mend her other numerous injuries. It would likely be another day before Jez would managed to wake up from her stupor.

 

[Jez Winters]

Jez Winters was a mess. Her mind was broken and her mind shattered by the loss and grief pulling her downward. Her only remedy was the spice in which everything valuable she owned had paid for. It turned her into a puppet, mindlessly moving around until the next fix. Completely unaware of what was happening the man picked her up after blindfolding her. It served its purpose because she seemed much less distracted by all the lights and blurring movements around her.

Everything else was a dream. The Sith who'd come to rescue her -in a loose manner of speaking- would begin performing his own surgery on the girl. On her memories. Jez's past with Sin was erased and rewritten, changing what she thought she remembered into something else. She groaned and protested against Castus as he worked, but she couldn't really do much in her pathetic state. She squirmed a little on his shoulder where he carried her, though that was a lost cause too.

By the time they got back to the ship, or wherever he was taking her, Jez was practically drooling like a brain-dead vegetable. Her mind had completely checked out now; one might argue if she was even awake. When she did finally come to her senses she knew she was no longer in the slum pit she visited prior. The lights were too bright. Jez closed her eyes and tried shutting out the white, blinding colors. Her arms tried to reach up and cover them, but she quickly came to the discovery that her hands were bound to her sides. Not with any sort of cuffs or shackles, simple medical bindings to keep her from pulling out the medicine lines.

The worst part of it all was that they were still plenty effective against her. Jez had completely cut herself off from the Force. That was why her body wasn't healing. Old wounds were still bruised and scared. Added to that all the spice running through her veins it would be obvious why she was needing some fluids.

"Master?...." Jez called out in a panic. "Master? Where are you? You can't leave me. Please not again. Don't leave me again."

If she hadn't turned away her greatest ally she'd know the man was simply in the other room. No such luck. She was lying in a bed and strapped to it, while being in a white room giving her the worst of headaches. How soon would the withdrawal symptoms kick in? That was another battle she didn't look forward to facing.

 

[Castus Shan]

Castus had all but ignored the young woman sense leaving her in the care of the droid. Who did not leave her since the human Sith had literally dropped Jez off in it's care. When she managed to wake and move around the medical droid had sent a signal to Castus to return.

The human Sith had been training in the room next door when the signal came. But it was in fact the screaming that got his attention. Castus moved from the room to her bedside. Dressed in his training robes and his saber hilt still in hand. He stood beside her. It was unclear if his efforts to fix her mind had worked, or if she wee still dealing with the loss of her original master.

"I see you're awake." he said as he looked about her. "How do you feel. Other than the obvious of course."

 

[Jez Winters]

When there came no answer, her cries got louder and she started trying to free herself from the bed. She was still weak however and didn't get much more than a fuss. Still, she would quiet back down when the door whooshed open and Castus came calling. Her face lit up with a smile upon seeing him and for a moment she felt like everything was going to be ok. Something nagged at her mind though as she stared at him. It was like...it was her first time really seeing him. But that was her master...wasn't it? The one who decided to train and teach her? Why did it feel like she was just now meeting him?

Castus would ask her how she felt causing Jez to look down at herself. "Everything...hurts. And I'm so tired. These lights, they're giving me a migraine. But I think...I guess I'm alright aside from that. Was I....sick?"

 

[Castus Shan]

Castus could see the smile on her face as he approached her. 'The reconstruction must of worked' he thought to himself. He gave a half smile back, and he could then see the little flicker of confusion in her eyes. Castus understood the meaning behind it. Somewhere deep down in her mind there remained conflict. But his efforts were overpowering those sensations, at least for now.

"I'm not surprised", he told her. "You've spend the past couple of months on a bender." Castus clipped his saber to his belt and then reached over to place a couple of fingers on her hairline along her right temple. The gesture meant to sooth the tiny hint of distrust, "You have missed so much little puppet. But I have found you."

He then looked to the droid still near her bedside. "She has recovered well enough." The droid gave a response of acceptance and then removed the iv and monitors from Jez. Then retreated to restock equipment or perhaps charge, feeling no longer needed.

"I have returned what you have lost, restoring your purpose once again." he said. The words carrying the subtle venom of the dark side. "Do you understand ?"

 

[Jez Winters]

As if he'd insulted her, Jez looked away with a sad expression. "The spice....yeah." It wasn't something she had a choice over. The drug was made to be addicting. And when she was already on her downward spiral into her own personal hell, it was only a matter of time before she ended up taking something she'd regret.

His hand at her face made her gasp silently and tense up. This was not a move out of fear but perhaps more of disbelief. His warm hand against her skin brushed away a few stray hairs giving her whole body a tingle. She had a deep memory of him playing with her hair and petting it as his fingers stroked through her locks. The reminder made her smile. Even more so when he called her by her little pet name.

When his hand pulled away she tried to reach for him but the fabric straps held her back. She made a pitiful whimpering sound. The droid would then come -at Castus' orders- and remove Jez from the machines as well as her restraints. Jez reached for her master's hand and brought it to her cheek where she rested against his warm skin for a moment longer.

"I have missed you as well, my master. I knew you were alive. Somehow I just knew it. You came back for me. I promise...I'll never doubt you again. I have and always will be your loyal apprentice. Your puppet in the darkness. My oath to you has never faltered."