Oh boy, if the Shrine of Healing on Voss didn’t give me Feelings(TM) about Zashiil. Minor Jedi Consular storyline spoilers ahead.
The Jedi Consular storyline (LS, anyway) really is just about sacrificing pieces of yourself and your strength over and over for the sake of others, isn't it? The plague, and now this. (I knew there was going to be a plot point around Voss healing-sacrifices in this storyline! I felt it in my bones!) Splitting pieces of yourself off to give to others because they need it more, over and over.
(And what happens when there’s nothing left?)
And then... this exchange.
What a question to ask Zashiil - one who grew up a slave surrounded by and living in pain both physical and emotional, one who clings to Jedi philosophy to save her from returning to that state, one who spent the entire first chapter of this class story in slowly growing pain and fatigue from shielding so many others against a plague seemingly without end.
Zashiil knows there’s no negotiating with something like this - it simply is, and must be dealt with head-on. Her sister, interestingly, most definitely would have said to fight back - but then, Duserra never learned that fighting back would only bring more suffering like Zashiil did; she had to fight back or she would lose her sense of self. Zashiil, though, learned to be quiet, and still, and become like stone - the immovable object to her sister’s unstoppable force. She learned to endure pain and suffering and loss by being the cliff that the waves break against, battered and assaulted but unmoving and ultimately untouchable. She stands firm, digs in her heels and refuses to be moved, and lets whatever must happen happen - and at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what she has to suffer. So long as the smallest core of her being survives it, she can rebuild from that. She’s done it before.
