Chapter Text
"How does it feel to be the Alliance Commander," Valkorian didn't physically appear, just whispered in Lo'nash's head; voice low and silken, dryly downplaying Alliance before emphasizing Commander. "This so called Alliance is only the first step in defeating my son."
It was just after three in the morning, or something close to that; not that standard measurements of time mattered when ships were coming and going no matter what the planetary time was. Internally it felt like one of those hours of the night when even insomniacs started to doze off -- something everybody in the Alliance had reached the point of over these last few months -- with the telltale dull ache of desperation for sleep and the commiserate inability to slip into its embrace.
Valkorian chuckled softly, almost sympathetically. He knew better then anybody that it had so long since she'd slept that there were spots across her vision and each step felt like the last she could manage.
Occasionally in these moments he'd lull her to sleep with stories from his past interwoven with flecks and sparks of his power -- his stories stories blurred sometimes, feeling more like her own memories than simply stories. Some mornings she would wake up covered in a cold sweat; impressions fading away like dreams, dark whispers of a being so ancient that the places and people were little more then echoes of memories.
After since she'd left Zakuul her dreams left her subconscious mind full of flashes of unfathomable power; exultant terror -- sometimes her own, sometimes caught in the expressions of others -- at the feeling of being in total control; and of the intoxication of absolute confidence; and of the nearly unlimited ability Valkorian had to tap into The Force.
Valkorian had showed her what he had experienced on Ziost early on; although showed was a poor word for seeing and feeling events through two sets of memories.
She had asked him about Ziost and then immediately regretted it -- it had been inevitable that she would, but, there was nothing that could have prepared her to experience even a fraction of being the harbinger of a cataclysm.
After that was when Lo'nash had stopped sleeping at night.
More than a decade of military service with its attendant grief and struggle -- all of her life experience combined really -- felt like nothing next an eternity wrapped up in a few seconds of experiencing what it had been to exist only as a blinding rage shattered into millions of splinters each consuming and burning all at once.
There was no nightmare that she could have ever conjured that compared, and it was always there now. The screams filled any silence in her mind.
Every night Valkorian would appear and whisper, "All I need is a few seconds of control and I can ease the pain for you and let you sleep." Most nights it was as Emperor Valkorian, benevolent and silver-tongued, condencendingly regal like her father had always been; others he was a slender wraith of a man with eyes the color of the moon whose voice with hypnotic and whose teeth were razor sharp.
He was in a good mood tonight, and didn't push her for anything, content to gloat as exhaustion crept over her.
"You'll need my power if you hope to defeat my son," it was the same line Lo'nash had been hearing for weeks now and she didn't react, almost missing that Valkorian actually wasn't repeating the same monologue. "I thought you understood this, but, I believe a demonstration is in order."
"I don't--" she answered him aloud out of habit, when with a wave of his hand something in her mind shifted all at once; a feeling of pressure gaining intensity until it felt like her skull was going to crack open.
He laughed again, the sound echoing painfully as she slipped into unconsciousness, his offer of a demonstration making her last thought of of terror at what that might be.