Freya's Offer of Help

(OOC: Am I the only one who immediately thought "YOU...SHALL NOT...PASS!!")

Artemis breaks into a cold sweat. It's just as he thought. This is very, very not good. He keeps the protective Force aura around him.

"We have two choices." His voice sounds distant and detatched. "The first is the obvious one. For that, I should probably be in the box first. The second is trying to confront and destroy what the Jedi condemned into this pit. He might even help us do so. I'm inclined to believe that the first option is the safer one, but I also don't know what state I'll be in when I wake up. Sith is the priority."

OOC: This one is on me.

As the Doctor stands up his feet kick a piece of rubble over the edge. After a moment or two a noticeable splash is heard, followed by the sound of some wet sticky creature grumbling as it digests. It goes silent again except for that slow trickle. Perhaps the gaping pit is not as bottomless as it originally looked.

"The box is just a place to hide, and it won't protect you from your own mind. It would probably like that, actually... have us lock you away so it can consume your fear and darkness in peace. No, I say we find a way to cross while you still have it quiesced, for now."

Artemis stares at Freya for a moment, uncomprehendingly.

"Hide? Hide?" The doctor's voice is an urgent whisper. "I don't think you understand. I meant you killing me in the box where I can't be possessed and where this thing can't escape to the outside."

He takes in a deep breath and locks his gaze with Freya's. "But if you think we should try to cross--if you think it's worth the risk--then all right. Do you have any ideas?"

"Why is the first option always to die? It's not noble. It's desperate. I already offered to kill you when we were finished and you turned me down, so you must think that you have something to offer the Galaxy beyond gauze, sutures, and a booming economy for mercenaries. If you had some fire, something you wanted to live for and achieve, then that" -- she points down the pit -- "wouldn't have found itself a home so easily."

The doctor clenches his fingers into a fist, and then forcibly relaxes. He has to keep control over his emotions. Force shrouded around him, he is calm.

"My offering something to the galaxy is contingent upon my mind not being diseased." He shrugs. "I'm very sick. We both know this. My primary objective was to come in here and heal my sickness so that I could have a solid reason to live and achieve."

He points at the chasm as well. "But that is Sith. We both know how powerful Sith is. This isn't about me. I am utterly insignificant compared to the threat it poses. The most responsible thing to do is to make sure that it never gets out of here alive. If you believe that we can do that together without requiring my death, then I will do my damnedest to make that happen. But I do not want the Galaxy being threatened again due to my incompetence. Am I understood?"

When the doctor clenches his fist the entire corridor shakes and bits of rubble fall from the ceiling only to stop when he calms down.

Freya glances around as dust and plaster drops from the ceiling.

"Yes, Sith is dangerous and a terrible threat. However, he is exactly what he has always been for you -- a distraction from what is important. You're always waiting for some condition to be fulfilled so you can start your life… 'I have to cure the Vox Virus'… 'I have to cure Galetae'… 'I have to defeat Sith'… 'I have to be sane'… It never ends because you always make sure that there's something more important ahead.

"Time is against all of us, and in the end it will always win. If you're going to wait until everything is perfect before you start living your life, you're going to discover that it's over long before it's even begun. It is time to say things are good enough and move on.

"Besides, this is your mind. You have the power to end all of this if you just take responsibility for it. But that's been the problem all along."

If the doctor hadn't been working very hard to keep himself calm and serene, he's sure Freya's words would have upset him. But as it is, he looks at her in silence for several seconds, piecing apart what she said and formulating his reply. When he does speak, his voice is still detached.

"Oh. I didn't realize you meant a life life. I'm sorry for the confusion. I meant life just as in the right to continue to exist, and to be worthy of that I really do need to be sane so that I can be useful and not dangerous. I don't deserve a life life of my own. I don't even have the right to contemplate one. That implies acceptance and forgiveness. No one else has forgiven me for what I've done, so certainly things are not 'good enough' yet."

Artemis turns his head to look at the chasm. "As for responsibility..." He shakes his head, but not in disagreement. "I'm clearly not understanding something. I know that this is my mind," he reasons. "But when I try to exert control, sometimes something else has a hold of it. Sometimes I'm just not strong enough. Knowing that I am responsible for this does not seem to be the same as 'taking responsibility'."

He looks back at Freya. "Perhaps you can help me to understand what I'm doing wrong."

"It's all the same thing. What is the point of existing without living and doing something you enjoy? You and Sith have a lot in common when it comes to this. He made bad choices and then continued to make them so he wouldn't have to deal with the consequences. In the end, instead of accepting them, dealing with them, and moving on, he took the metaphor to its ultimate extreme: he literally buried himself inside of a lifeless husk to avoid his fate.

"I'm not saying that you have made the same choices or that they were of the same magnitude, but you are on the same path. You accept the guilt for what you have done without accepting the responsibility.

"Instead, you over-think your own salvation which is, of course, handicapped by your own complete lack of self-worth. You mourn your life instead of appreciating it. It's a vicious cycle and one you need to break. All of this --" she motions at the world around them "-- is self-introspection with a microscope, so focused that you cannot see yourself as a whole. You've focused your attention and hopes to another 'cure'.

"There's a reason you shouldn't be using this Force technique on yourself. You are changing things, but you're too much a part of it. You're going to end up lost inside yourself because of the minutia.

"You have to step back and see that you're giving all these pieces of yourself too much power, too much control. You're using the Force to give this all a reality that it shouldn't have and it is becoming independent of you.

"Accept that all of this is you..." she waves at the walls, "That isn't..." she points into the pit, "And walk over there and open that door!"

What Freya is saying makes sense, Artemis realizes as he listens. It makes a sort of sense that never clicked before.

"I've been running away from myself all this time," he says, blinking. He crosses his arms loosely over his chest. He looks around the hallway. So the Force was giving this place too much reality and independence? He could buy that. But since Artemis is the core, the true core of this place, he should be able to link with it not as an observer, but as a god.

"Thanks, Freya. I'm going to try something. You're right...right now I'm nothing more than an observer, and I need to change that."

He sits down on the floor again and closes his eyes, going into meditation. This time, he'll reach out and connect with the world around him. He'll extend his consciousness outwards, aiming to not be trapped in a single aspect within his mind, but rather to truly accept this place as himself and the images as mere symbols of himself, and then wrest control of it all. If he senses that this is causing him to wake up, he'll stop. He also wants to avoid kicking Freya out.

You feel connected to it all, but what will you do with that?

Search for every spec of Sith that has infected his mind, and clear it out. He doesn't want it transferring somewhere else, though (like Freya). It's an alien, unwanted presence, and he wants its roots flushed out and it dead. He'll strengthen his mental defenses for this, because he fully expects Sith to fight back. Not sure if there's any way to allow Freya to help in this, as it's Artemis taking control of his own mind, but if it's possible he'd like for her to be able to do so.

You begin to scour you mind looking for any signs of infestation, but as you go over it bit by bit you feel no foreign presence. Even in the dark goo that fills the pit you find no trace of Sith.

Huh. Interesting. I'm 100% positive of that? Artemis will try to identify the goo, then, and figure out what the hell the farseeing was actually showing him. If it's a part of him, what part is it? And what actually happened in the scene he saw during farsee?

Okay, and how exactly are you doing these things?

Well, if he's connected to everything in the mindscape, then he's connected to the goo as well if that's a part of him. He has sense force and telepathy if either of those would help.

EDIT: And if he isn't connected to the goo, does he even sense anything where the goo is?

"Interesting fact of the day," Artemis speaks, eyes still closed and his concentration mostly elsewhere. "I can't sense any foreign presences here. So either the goo is hiding, or you're right and I am just a sick bastard."

You don't sense anything from the goo.

"What are you waiting for? Cross over and open the door."

[OOC: So tired...can't sleep...]

Artemis sighs. "Trying to see if I could identify The Blob, and get rid of it. Also seeing if I could strengthen my control over this place." He hrms. "I can't sense anything from the goo, though. That's weird."

He stands up, slowly, retaining his connection to the mindscape. "Let's go," he murmurs.

Artemis will, as he has done before, use his control over his mind to will himself to appear in the morgue, just inside the entrance. He'll take Freya with him, though.

Something is blocking you from just "bamfing" into the morgue, likely the Jedi guarding against anything trying to do so at the moment.

When I said you don't sense anything from the goo, yes that means you don't even sense it being there.

[OOC: Now I'm tempted to disbelieve the goo. And then I remember the horror I felt when Tryce wanted to disbelieve the stone wall in his way...]

Artemis sighs and facepalms lightly. "I suppose it's a good thing he's so brilliant at his job," he murmurs. "But really, what possessed me to tinker in here to begin with? I am such an idiot. Stupid blob that isn't there. Stupid Jedi. Stupid door. Stupid bloody independent aspects. You're right--I believe I did give these aspects independence from myself when I asked them to guard."

He looks up, takes a deep breath, and sends a knock at the morgue door. He wonders out loud, to Freya, "I wonder if this goo is really even here. I can't sense it even existing."

(Can he bamf them to the other side of the chasm just outside of the morgue, or is anything beyond the chasm off limits?)

Anything beyond the chasm does seem to be off limits.

The door to the morgue slowly creeks open, but only just a crack. The light from the morgue shines brighter than any of the lights flickering overhead.

The Jedi can be heard from inside the morgue, "Doctor?"