Bottom of the Wine Barrel

[Scherezade deWinter]

[member="Bedrovelse Hevn"]​

​

Coruscant​

Underworld​

Some smelly cantina​

Scherezade wiped the blood from the split in her lip as she sat down on the high cantina chair, signaling for the bartender to get her something to drink. Anything. It had been months since her return from the space between dimensions, months since she'd given her sister a new body, came clean in front of the leaders of the Confederacy, months since she'd been removed from the Knights Obsidian and into the Ministry of Secrets.

Months, and still nothing. Certainly, the amount of mocking stares and pointed fingers had lessened to near to nothing now. Money was coming in – both from her company and from the Confederacy. She would never know what it was like to be poor again, never know what it was like to go hungry and be stressed over not being able to afford bacta.

And yet she was still not happy. Madalena, Josh, Daisy, and a few more people were in her life, and yet the empty hole inside her heart and stomach felt as bottomless as it had always been. All the missions and all the wars she ran to were not enough to cover it up, to fill it, to… To anything, really. It did not help that all her friends had paired up. Madalena had Cardinal, Daisy had Kaden, Josh had Ra… And her, alone, always the third wheel to them all, never good enough to be paired.

Her body was so full of scars. Most of them were from her earliest days out of the pebble, before she knew the importance of armor and had been titled as the best pin cushion in the 'verse. Yet none of those scars hurt as the on atop of her left breast, the one that was so small and insignificant compared to the others in terms of appearance. The very scar she had received from the Master Jedi who wished to kill her simply for what she was and not what she had or hadn't done, who'd stabbed her through the heart with his lightsaber.

They told her she was supposed to be angry at that. That she was supposed to seek vengeance. But she hadn't cared. A wound was a wound and a near death experience was what it was. But it was when her heart and soul shattered when she came to, that had been the true pain. Pain that had lodged herself into that tiny scar, given her by a man who had nothing to do with it. It was months later, when she was a raging alcoholic, and so alone, that she found the Jedi again and ended up carving his heart out. It still remained in a jar on her ship, still beating. But there had been no joy in it. No passion. No nothing.

And the missions… She barely slept, still afraid of the dark, still terrified of dreaming. So she kept her schedule full. Running from mission to mission, from war to war, throwing herself into work so deeply that it sometimes seemed as though that was all she was – a mission completing droid who happened to be in an organic body.

But she was so tired of it. So tired of it all. Her blood still sang when she fought, yes, but one could not be fighting every breathing moment.

So eventually, after the events on Taanab, on Azure, and on Kiros, she gave up. She'd marked herself as unavailable for several weeks and hopped on her ship to Coruscant, leaving her Loth Wolf and her duck with her sister. She hadn't wanted to go back to the Penthouse, to see what was left of it or if it had already been rebuilt, not when the last time she was there… Yeah.

So after a few days of just wandering the streets, she realized she'd been in the Underworld for a long time. Her weapons had remained on her ship at the docks, but a single look from those glowing eyes of hers that spelled out the pain and loss and potential anger that lurked within her had thus been enough to ward off anyone who might have attempted to approach in order to cause harm.

And eventually, she was at the pits again. Terribly illegal. Once, she was there as a semi regular, fighting so that she would have credits for bacta and fuel. About food, she'd been less worried during those times, knowing where she could hunt to get the meat she practically lived on.

Fight, after fight, after fight. Even lost as she was, she kept winning now. It was so much easier than it had been a year before, so much simpler. Bruises had formed on her body, easy to see since much of her clothes had ripped as well, putting her in the equivalent of ripped denims and a shirt that had more holes than fabric in it while still covering the essentials. Her long hair was a mass of tangles and knots, and now that her lip had stopped bleeding, the wound was still an angry red.

So she sat there, looking down at her glass. She could smell the liquor, though she wasn't sure what type it was. Something strong that probably put the hair on your chest, as some liked to say. She hadn't had a single drink since coming back. She was too afraid to, remembering all the months of being a drunk and broken mess prior to her attempt to kill herself, an attempt that had gone so wrong in so many different ways.

Sighing, Scherezade leaned her chin against her hand, and just stared at it. Maybe sooner or later she would drink.

Or maybe not.

 

[Bedrovelse Hevn]

The Underworld filled his heart with nostalgia and memories. None of them especially pleasurable. He enjoyed his reign as Regent for the Ronove Order. He hadn’t laid eyes on it since cutting his way out of their base, and escaping narrowly with his life. He felt it unwise to show his face in a place where festering sounds may yet linger, but that time had passed now. Kane, Vulcan, Firus, Psyrus, Longinus, and Zabar were all dead or long gone. He knew because he personally saw to it that each one stared into his glacial furious eyes before passing on to hell.

He enjoyed the opera most of all. Almost any meetings he had were conducted conversing while watching the dazzling performances over drinks. It was probably the only location down here that had any sentimental or warm feelings resonate from it. He had just finished a lone trip to that very opera. A lovely troupe of twi’lek gymnasts doing some kind of interpretive display as twinkling lights and bizarre creatures appeared as holograms. Upon his exit he met up with his crew. The Shistavanen and Catharian were already good and wasted when Hevn arrived on the scene. The name of the bar had been wiped from the face of the cantina by some random act of violence and he could not recall its name.

The boys loved fight night! It had been their choice over Hevn’s more elegant choice of past time. Not that he didn’t love a good one too. Luckily for him he missed the small fries weeding themselves out early in the night. His companions took joy in watching amateurs absolutely suck. They took more amusement in the early bouts than the more serious ones at the end.

“Bedrovelse, you’ve got to see this woman, GO!” Roarshen seemed especially elated given his usual demeanor, unless that was the alcohol. However, Mad Claws chimes in immediately after, “No! SERIOUSLY This chick could rip Kali in half with punches.”

That was no joke. Kali was a savage Dark Jedi that Hevn had trained himself to be a wrecking ball in close combat. Her talents in the close game, fists, feet, and knives, were diabolical. She could cripple an entire squadron of soldiers just tumbling through their midst unarmed. They were comparing another to an absolute beast of his own creation.

“Then its time to place our wagers!” Hevn was bemused by the prospect that someone could best anyone trained by his hand in direct combat, but his guys never fooled with him. Even at their drunkest would never dare to cross Bedrovelse Hevn. They had tasted his wrath and knew better than to misstep in any way, shape, or form. A particularly nasty and unforgettable punishment included being gassed with vapors that trapped them in their own specifically designed hells until he was satisfied with their suffering. They knew better than to trifle him with untruths. At this point in their travels together, he knew he could count on their judgment.

Hevn’s wealth was at one point inconceivable. He had conquered the entirety of the outer rim alone, and sold the planets to the highest bidders. A warpath that scarred lives and people’s long gone from those worlds now, but the wealth outlasted them. The trio bet stupid amounts of money that twist the bookie’s gut to hear aloud.

They sat down with their drinks and were graced by all the dark angels with a symphony of complete destruction. Every move she made cracked a bone in her opponents body, knocked them clean out, or dropped them like a brick. At first he was cheering, amazed and enthralled by her artistic assault. Then he became curious. Someone that strong was certainly someone he ought to know, maybe even recruit in a dive like this. Then he saw her eyes.

The emeralds in her face were cracked and wounded. Something in her was aching with wrath. He saw himself. The way he lashed out to deal with his own untamed nightmares. Sometimes they didn’t stop. They nag, and claw, and burn you where you can never heal exactly right. She was trapped in a nightmare and she was [member="Scherezade deWinter"] .

Chaos be damned! What happened to her? He didn’t expect to see anyone from the Confederacy lurking here doing illicit activities. She won every match in a ruthless blur of blood and bone and bodies thumping against the floor. At the carnival of gore’s end she wandered to the bar. She was given an extremely wide birth from the rest of the cantina. Several chairs were open around her.

That was when his imposing shadow cast over her, and settled in a chair to her right. With the flick of his hand, a gaggle of credit chits clang to a halt in front of her drink.

“You made me a pretty penny tonight, it’s the least I can do. It’s a pleasure to meet the fire starter in the flesh. Our very own arsonist extraordinaire.” He smiles at her signaling for his own drink.

The bartender gasps in a horrible gulping noise, finally croaking, “ Darth-“

“Shh damn it. Keep your voice down. I don’t do titles anymore. They’re stupid.”

He turns in his seat pointing to random people, “ Call him a Lord, him a King, him a God. I would break them all the same. Now, whatever she’s having. Thanks.” The bartender hopped to it right away, pouring him a cup of wine. Hevn sniffs it, identifying the substance and shrugs. He turns back to face Sherezade. “Bedrovelse Hevn. Jokes aside. You’re the real deal. Truly a pleasure. I won’t ask your business here, but I would like your company. My friends got ahead if you catch my drift.”

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

[member="Bedrovelse Hevn"]​

One sharp inhale, and one of her ribs protested the motion, causing Scherezade to blink in surprise. She'd probably broken every single one of her ribs numerous times in the short span of her life, but she had completely missed this injury before now. Sighing, she shook her head, looking at the glass of liquor in front of her. Maybe it was time to go back to drinking. Just to take a little bit of the edge off. It wasn't like it would keep her from being able to do another round. Even at her drunkest darkest moments, she had still been a flurry on any field of battle, feeling clear and focused for a change. Until the battle ended. Then it was back to everything.

She hadn't noticed his shadow, not until he sat down next to her, and only then did she look around, realizing only then that people had avoided her entirely as well. There was a nicely cleared radius around where she sat. All she could do though was shrug. It wasn't the first time there was an empty circle around her. It would not be the last.

Arsonist? Scherezade's eyes narrowed as she tried to understand what – oh. Taanab. She had burned several fields of food before the Mandalorians decided to slow her down. It had been a wonderful fight, full of bullets and hits and things that had caused her to need to re-construct her armor almost from scratch because of all the damage it had taken, as well as sleep for a good few long days in a tank of bacta.

Still looking at him as he spoke, Scherezade raised her chin ever so slightly, inhaling in his general direction. There was nothing here that severed her from the Force, and as such, her Blood Hound abilities were also at work. Abilities that let her toy with the blood of those she wished, sometimes even changing them, drawing out last memories, scenting bloodlines… And smelling species. His species, she did not recognize. She could tell by the undertones that it was something in the near human spectrum, but to be fair, looking at the man with regular vision would have given that away as well.

Turning to look at all the people the man was pointing at, she still remained silent, not sure of who the man was or what he wanted from her. It usually took very stupid men to come near her in situations like these. Stupid, or after something. And she didn't really have much to give aside for more muscle power, which she wasn't really in the mood to share right there and then. Only then he switched to calling her the real deal and the pleasure, and Scherezade found herself on unsure footing.

Bedrovelse Hevn. She knew the name. As part of the Ministry of the Secrets, it was her business to know about a whole bunch of things. She remembered that he was part of the Knights Obsidian but on any additional information on her part drew a blank.

"Most people aren't interested in my company at all," she said quietly as she took the wine glass in her hand, "but I'm still not going to help you get head like your friends," she warned him, the look leaving no place for questioning regarding what she'd be willing or not be willing at all to do. It was a shame that she was so horrible at these social cues and had completely misinterpreted Hevn's words.

And at last, she emptied her glass out in one go. It tasted like chit. "Another one!" she snapped her finger at the bartender. It had been almost a year since she'd last had a drink, but she knew it would not been enough. The months of being a broken drunkard had ensured she would develop a good resistance to it. She could probably out drink most men that weighed in at a heavier weight class than her.

"So why do you want my company?" she asked, looking at Hevn again, "what's your damage?"

 

[Bedrovelse Hevn]

He was surprised that it took her so long to turn, and what followed next was more strange. She sniffed at him. The feline and the canine did that, but it was part of their species. They could tell much about where Hevn had been and what he was up to on the even the most trace of scents. What a...human? Was doing that for, well, was an issue of self consciousness. He pulls at his shirt and sniffs as well. He didn’t smell unusually foul as far as he could tell. They are in the underworld after all. It had a stink to it that he would not be held responsible for!

Looking into her eyes was a thing of agony. She was brooding to be certain, but there was so much pain and anger quaking in the black irises at the center of those emerald gems. He mirrors her action at draining the glass and refilling it, only casting the bartender a glance as he moved from her glass to his own. It didn’t taste bad, but it sure didn’t taste good either. One of those moments he was rather glad his synthetic tongue could not full grasp the attack of bitterness waging war on his mouth.

She horribly misinterpreted what he said. If those two drunks had heard her, they’d blow his ear drums out laughing and crushes his toes rolling in their own laughter and tears. It was a fortunate thing only the bartender overheard her comment, casting toward them a look of pure and uninhibited horror. He was clearly anticipating them to clash. Hevn’s rolling eyes only just catch the flood of pale gripping the bartender before he marched quickly towards the other end of the bar, stumbling with the glasses and his greetings to new customers.

She was tense, but his feelings told him it was not directed toward him. He wondered what world she came from to have misheard his Basic, or if perhaps Tanaab had left her deafened slightly in one ear. She had proven more irksome to the Mandalorians than Hevn and Alkor had managed, and she had been given the fight he so desperately craved.

He begins by clearing his throat awkwardly, “Not that Miss. I am not foolish enough to consider myself desirable to a woman by any stretch of the imagination. They are drunk, and I am not. They got ahead.” He raises his glass to her and clears it again. “Work in progress. In all fairness to this company, you did just finish beating most of them into a pulp. Rather impressively I might add. I greatly value the company of warriors of your caliber, do others not?”

He was treading carefully with her name, and the name of their faction. One could never be certain what lurking ear might be around. She was strong. Incredibly so. Someone he would undoubtably one day be alongside on the battlefield. Perhaps some day they would spar or train together. He preferred a familiarity with such warriors. It was easier to defend one another and dispatch the opposition if you knew each other. Strengths, weaknesses, and preferences.

She stared up at him one last time, choosing perhaps an unexpectedly heavy question. What was his damage? Where did he begin with such a saga of loss and torment. Both inflicted and dealt. He was a physical , mental, emotional, and moral abomination. He wasn’t flustered by the question so much as intrigued. She certainly didn’t look like she cared, but didn’t quite tell him off either. “My damage is existential. We would be through the entire cask, and another before I finished. I will share in its entirety if you wish. The shorthand would be that I am broken, lost, and without a purpose. It’s why I came here. I sense your pain is similar. Your pain is bleeding out even louder than those busted ribs. I could help you with that, if you’re through with the self destruction and ready for a night to remember. You are the champion after all. We could celebrate.”

The underworld was full of mischief to be had. He knew all the best spots to find it. It was the simple question of whether she wanted to partake.

[member="Scherezade deWinter"]

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

[member="Bedrovelse Hevn"]​

​

The bartender's expression was entirely lost on her. She caught it in the corner of her eye, but with too much else to focus on and pretend to not focus on, there was no place to register it or its meaning.

But then Hevn corrected her, and Scherezade blinked. For a moment, she expected blush to appear on her face at the embarrassment of having heard something so completely different, but it never came. Her face remained blank for the most part, only the most microscopic of changes giving away that she realized her mistake at all. But soon enough glasses were raised and she joined in, emptying hers just as fast as she had the one before.

"Warriors might be valued for company," she said bitterly, "but I'm not. I've attended every single party the Confederacy has thrown since I've joined it, and I can't remember a single one at which I belonged and wasn't just ignored or put in place to assume the mantle of the wallflower."

Another drink down. "Wait, not entirely true," she quickly corrected herself, taking the fourth drink, "there were a few where I was with… Others. But they were all paired up and I was there to be the third wheel who went home alone after all was said and done."

It was true. Every time she scraped her mind for memories that would show otherwise, she came up empty. Whether it was because she'd been standing alone at the Floating Peace ball, dancing on her own at the barge party several months ago, or just eating cheese cubes in the corner, it was always either alone or to third wheel one of her friends that showed up with their significant other. Not before her failed attempt at death, and not after, did she have a single event that would show her different. Not one.

"Anyway, I'm not a miss," she sighed, "just Scherezade." And even with that name there were a million various titles she could've added. But they all seemed so… empty, right there and then. No point in mentioning any of them, at all.

"I'm not a champion of anything," Scherezade said, taking another drink down. Still nothing. It was as though her body was made of the most resistant metal that existed against liquor. It was maddening. But his pain… She understood. Even without the details, she knew. So man of her parts were strung together by pain, and no matter how hard she tried she could never replace it. She was so tired of all of it.

"The last person who promised me a night I wouldn't forget betrayed me," she said after a long silence, "so let's not make any such promises. I have the time to listen to your story in full and I'm lousy at celebrating."

 

[Bedrovelse Hevn]

Rough around the edges aren’t you? He expected nothing less from the fire starter! The mando crusher. He didn’t see just any lady sitting next to him. He saw a radiant Valkyrie. He couldn’t put a finger on why she would find herself alone. Was it this roughness to her? He could imagine a man’s masculinity suffering in the shadow of such power. She had just put a beating on every living thing that would stand against her, in part because of a bad mood. Understandably intimidating.

Not to Hevn. There was a likening to himself he respected. Not to be trifled with. Keep it straight. If pain was the seed of her darkness, and the flower of her power, one of those punches could probably even give his metal exterior a dent. At the cost of a few fingers maybe, but if she was carrying on with broken ribs just to savor it....damn girl. That’s savage.

“My apologies Sherezade. I was mistaken in presuming you taken,” he corrected to retort. “I have had a similar experience with the Confederacy. I have known Alkor a long time, and I am new here. My initiation has included witches and utter dismissal. Despite going toe to toe with a Knight Commander. Whatever that means to them. Alkor and I go back to a time when the only thing I was ever really a part of killed itself from the inside. Pride eating every one like a parasite until there was nothing but hatred. Every ounce of effort. Everything your brothers and sisters mean to you converts into an equivalent pain. “

Hevn jabs his finger into the bar. The signal for more! He pours his wine and sips it to keep his pale lips from drying. He had already said more to her than he had pretty much anyone. He was miserable in his own right, but he had come to expect his own repulsion from others. Anyone who could sense the force could feel the ebbing darkness wrapped around him. He was menacing enough to deter most interaction with random strangers. This faction had a considerably moderate view of force users and Hevn was clearly an example of an extremist. True Evil. Self serving in all but the fewest of exceptions and capable, and willing to do anything necessary to achieve his goals. It was pretty much written on him, and he felt that shadowed a certain level of isolation. They were right to doubt a thing as dark and hateful as him.

“First I froze to death. Then my clan and bride to be were slaughtered. For his twisted amusement, a necromancer raised me from the dead to introduce me to their remains. It brainwashed me into hating and killing Jedi with every breath. I am a monster bound to only and absolute darkness. In time I became very good at killing. My hatred and anger were used by many to conquer the galaxy. I became wealthy, powerful, unruly. The dark side had fed until I sought the greatest warriors in the galaxy. The Dark Jedi Order taught me how to control every aspect of the darkness, for us there were no rules except for the pursuit of knowledge and power. We consolidated all of that power until there was nothing left to kill but each other. I had to kill people that I would have died for. Those people tried to kill me. You can consider Alkor and myself the only victors of that miserable war. It doesn’t matter who won when you’re the only one left. I killed every enemy on our list. Every deserter who fled my call to rally. Every wrong I could fabricate until there was finally still just a pit of boiling hate. So I went beyond. I stepped into death’s realm and saw for myself what hell does to even the strongest of dark souls. There is nothing to mourn anymore. It was all a lie, and I helped them. I ran into Alkor while I was reclaiming the artifacts of our Order. I saw myself entitled to them. I left. My victory was complete. I have taken time to study my acquisitions and grow stronger in new ways. I realized with my potential for hate and anger tapped out, I need to test myself further. I have to use this burn inside of me to achieve in other ways. How much of my passion has been dedicated to being the monster I look like has stunted my ability to function outside of a small box on the way to the next operation.”

How many glasses were gone now? The motion sort of became automatic for as long as she spared him to tell his story. He wondered if she was feeling the warm tingle yet. This had to be the second barrel and Hevn’s lips were unusually loose. It took his body a substantial amount of liquor to get pretty much anywhere which gave others the impression he was an alcoholic among his other toxic vices. Killing and dying sort of scramble your priorities.

“Like I was saying about my desirability, I’ve no luck in companionship. I’m just miserable with people without this stuff.” He wiggled the glass to implicate the liquor. “As for the celebrating leave that to me. It’s quite unlike myself to say enough fighting for one night, but I would like to value your company by seeing you in another light. First you’ve got to tell me your damage. “ he does not smile, remembering her reference to betrayal. He knew the feeling on the grandest scale. “Then I might tempt you to racing speeders against the underworlds most devious and dishonest? Anything goes. Or perhaps a dance if those legs can do more than roundhouse kicks.”



[member="Scherezade deWinter"]

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

[member="Bedrovelse Hevn"]​

​

​

Alkor. She knew that name. The man was one of the Knight Commanders with the Knights Obsidian – peer to her sister, who held that position as well. Now that she thought about it, she remembered going on a mission with him and a few others as well, back when she carried her sister's name to continue the disguise that was set in place. She'd kissed him during that mission to distract him from the spirits that were trying to take his body and mind over. It hd been the mission that had given her the inspiration needed to create her Vita Stones. No longer would she or anyone be under the influence of spirits.

Remaining silent, she joined in on the signal for more, taking another drink of liquor down, feeling the burn of the fluids inside of her chest, disappointed that there was still no actual effect. Perhaps, in her jumps from being alive to being stuck in the space between dimensions, she had somehow lost her ability to become drunk? Would she have a similar reaction to spice, if she'd ever take that first step and tried it? She wasn't certain – not that it would, and not that it was particularly smart of her to give it a try.

Listening to his tail, Scherezade often squinted for moments, trying to piece the layers behind the story together. He was not a young man. No. That story could not fit into a human or near human life that was only a few decades long. That meant that he was another one of those who'd lived well past their natural life span, almost like her, though her situation was somewhat different. But she knew. She comprehended. Used as a weapon, even if the stuff around it was all different. Wasn't that what some of them were just for, either by nature or nurture? She sighed, taking another drink down. Still nothing. It was maddening.

And still he wanted her company. That, she did not understand. Not at all. It was not the first time she'd won fights. She'd won so many of them, and most were even perfectly legal. Yet when she showed up for the post-war celebrations… Nothing. Absolutely nothing, as though she did not even exist. Her record was glorious, almost completely absent of mission failures, piling on win after win. And it was still not good enough. She would never be good enough for them.

And now this stranger was offering… Celebration? Speeders and dancing? She blinked, pausing again.

Normally, she would have held her tongue. Not say a word. Most of those who knew the full story betrayed her anyway. It didn't matter. But maybe it was the drink, because before long she was letting the words spill out of her mouth, pausing every now and then only to take another drunk down. Perhaps she was drunk, after all.

"I was born over seven hundred years ago in a planet that was the capital of a Sith kingdom in the Unknown Regions," she began, "I was still a baby when the Gulag virus became a threat, so my mother, a SIth Sorceress Queen, put all of us inside of pebbles and rocks to keep us protected until the threat was gone. But my grandmother stole the pebble I was in and kept me a prisoner for 700 years. And even though I remained a baby, I was aware of all that time. I have memories of the Darkness, and memories of my parents and the planet I'd been born on, and the long darkness that came after that. Seven centuries.

And then one day, I'm released. Not just released – Released on Ryloth, broken out of the pebble, and suddenly I'm in an adult body. Not two hours later I'm taken by the Nightmother into the Mandragora, the mark of Jart on my back, I can barely string coherent sentences together, and my grandmother branded information of five centuries prior to the Gulag into my brain. And this was all supposed to be okay, right? This was a year and a half ago.

I fought. Everywhere, every mission, everything there was, I fought. No one told me I was receiving a salary and how to pick it up so I was also dirt poor at the time, taking on odd jobs outside of the Confederacy so I could afford gas and bacta, and hunting so I could eat. And everywhere in the Confederacy – mockery. Never good enough. If I saved their butts and took endless spears into my body, it was still not good enough. If I defeated the enemy almost on my own, not good enough. If I made sure our troops made it back in one piece, still not good enough. Never enough.

And then I met someone," she paused and took three drinks down at once, "and I fell in love with him. But he was apparently doing me and the Nightmother at the same time. I taught him how to use the Force, how to pilot a ship, how to be free, when it was all he wanted because he came from a planet where freedom did not exist for people like him. But when I was hurt on a mission and had to be quarantined, he decided to hump the Nightmother instead of me. And have I told you that Nightmother had adopted me as a sister? I had Jart on my back, whispering whatever he wanted to into her ear, and she later pretended to not know anything about it. Krakking liar.

The guy and I, we were supposed to go free his siblings after that mission. But he never showed up, not even after I was released from the quarantine. And he knew I was in love with him. So I decided to take some time off and go explore elsewhere. Paused on Coruscant where I stumbled into a Jedi that knew my family and decided to kill me just because of my blood line."

Moving her hands, Scherezade moved her shirt to show Hevn the scar – her body was full of them, but that was the only one that actually hurt, though never physically.

"I don't know if I died or almost died. But he stabbed me, right in the heart, and left me there. The Nightmother and the man came and collected me, nursed my body back to life. But in the week that I was in a coma, I was in the Darkness again. Only this time not as a child, but as me. And it was a nightmare. For them, it was a week, but for me, it was several years of torture, and fighting. And I fought, because I'd made that man a promise – I promised him that no matter what happened, I would fight my way back to him, that I would not give up.

Little did I know that during that week he fessed up to having been with us both – and chose the Nightmother, the one who was supposed to be my sister. And she chose him back, all this next to my body. When I finally woke up I thought I was in the Darkness still. I was on the verge of breaking, not understanding what had happened, what was happening, and they decided to let me know immediately that while I was out, they'd chosen each other and claimed each other."

She wasn't crying, but her eyes were wet. She closed them, taking a deep breath, remembering that night so sharply. The emotions. The feelings. The words said. Did she have it within her to keep going? To continue what she had only told a single chapter of? There was so much more, her life laced with bad experience after bad experience. Ever since she'd been put inside that damned pebble, she had been pulling short straw after short straw. And there was nothing she could do to change that.

"I left her ship that night. Disowned them both. But my heart… My heart still yearns for him. And until a few months ago, for her as well," she sighed, "I was there for him for everything and he accused me of abandoning him. As if the fact that he left me in the quarantine to hump her meant nothing. As if breaking me like that meant nothing. As if the fact my so called "sister" chose him and he chose her and all this by my body was meaningless and then I was at fault for hurting them by disowning them. He told me, a few months ago, that she'd cast a spell so she wouldn't feel the pain of losing me anymore. And it's my fault. How screwed up can a situation get?!

They broke me, but it was my fault. People offered me help, but said the price would be to kill him, so I rejected the help. He blamed me for not getting help. I loved him so much that I came up with a key to save his entire species because we thought they were about to go extinct. It was still not enough. They could hurt me, ignore me, betray me, but the entire fault for everything was on me. And when I became a drunk, trying to dull the pain, he mocked that too."

She was definitely crying now. "And all of this is still only the first months of me being outside of the pebble."

 

[Bedrovelse Hevn]

Hevn attempting to console another was about as bizarre as asking a fire to fight flames. The outstanding unlikeliness of his success was not lost on him either. He mirrors the rise and fall of her glass with his own. Something told him that neither one of them were accustomed to venting or speaking so much about themselves outside of solitary confinement or psychological evaluation.

On the surface, she was an absolute prime recruit. She was talented, dangerous, and full of pain that could be cultivated into strength. Underneath that cunning of Hevn’s, evaluating her potential power and the magnitude it could achieve, he was shattered. Of the hundreds of planets, the thousands of people, all the circles in Hell he had traveled, this woman was the second person to ever earn his sympathy. Alkor Centaris was the only other being with which he would not trade his starting hand with. A term of phrase to express that their origins were nastier than his own, and he’d gladly live his own life over simply not to be them.

Her tears were what slaughtered that little sliver of heart buried a billion miles under ice and stone. He couldn’t help but think it was rarity akin to Angels themselves. Trapped inside a stone for that long while conscious was such an absurd and cruel torture that Hevn himself had never fathomed it. Manipulated from the very beginning of your being. A suffering he knew well. Deception and betrayal was the only human interaction she knew, other than being overlooked completely.

She lacked the pride of a princess. She was built of muscle and scars, inside and out. She had the drive that so few lived without, but no purpose to put it to. A devastating loss and waste to the galaxy to see her destroy herself so thoroughly.

The warm tingle that had been growing is suppressed by a sobering gust of cold. He was shaken. He wanted to at the least offer a hand on her shoulder, but was uncertain of what that response that might invoke. Even his cybernetic limbs were unsteady with the Olympian task of choosing what to say next. “You have made a choice far wiser than you realize, Sherezade. All the blood in the galaxy can’t get your love back. You put the same fight in that ring as you do in your love, and you deserve someone who would give you as much. Take your pain and use it to fight for something you do love. You will conquer any obstacle you desire.”

He cast a lingering stare at her scar before sighing into his glass and emptying it again. “Kill on sight is kind of a lifestyle for me. Hatred knows no boundaries and will paint its targets conveniently. It’s my speciality.” Blood poured from his head to his toes metaphorically. His hands were not enough to contain the flood of it he was responsible for.

How young you really are, and yet grew above the thirst for revenge so quickly. Great things are in store for you.

He jabs his finger into the bar, ordering refills. How deep they were in now was beyond him. “Sherezade. Tell me what happened after. Your pain is not a joke to me, and I would hear it in full.” Surely part two couldn’t be more heartbreaking than the first. He was here for her, to listen, from time to time even the most hardened needed to spill the horror in their guts just to acknowledge it. To accept it was real. To pave the way ahead.

[member="Scherezade deWinter"]

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

[member="Bedrovelse Hevn"]​

​

​

"I made no choice," she said bitterly. For what choice had she made? Disowning them? They had healed her body back to life, but what was a dying compared to the death of a soul? They'd never shown any sort of regret over what they'd done, over the choices made. It was all her fault. The only thing she could've done otherwise would be to remain there, like their good little pet, turn the other cheek and stand in the dark corner while they continued their oh so happy life together. She'd wished them a good one, but in her heart… That wish had not been sincere. She hoped that what they had done would cause them to suffer for as long as she suffered from it at least. But it hadn't. And she was still in pain and anguish.

"I do still love him," she admitted a second time. "But I cannot fight for him. I cannot save his life again as I already have already once… And expect it to be appreciated in any way. He is the only person who had ever told me that he sees me. And one that never actually has."

Wiping her face on the back of her arm, she took the next drink down. There wasn't even the sensation of warmth in her throat or stomach anymore. Might as well had been drinking water. And still – she did not feel drunk. Did not feel tipsy. Did not feel… Anything, that she was supposed to, as a result of the liquor. Were they being given the watered down crap?

Looking at Hevn, she wondered. Why did he want to hear it in full? How could she know her pain was not a joke to him? So many people had made such claims in the past, and almost each and every time it was later proved wrong. So many people that she had known had stabbed her between the shoulder blades, she was certain that if she could rip her soul out just to take a look at it, it would be riddled with so many cracks and holes that it would barely be able to hold itself together.

And yet, she could not deny that she wanted to talk. Because, even if he would later mock her as many others had done, now, he was not. It was such a silly thing to think, she realized. But almost every choice she'd made thus had been wrong, so what was one more wrong on the infinite pile?

"We did not speak, after that night that I disowned them and skinned myself to be rid of the mark of the Mandragora," she continued after a long silence, "but we'd developed a bond. When the man and I are on the same planet… We know where the other one is. Always. This has not diminished, has never stopped. I couldn't… I couldn't do anything. I continued to break, with every single breath I took. And I couldn't sleep, because every time I closed my eyes, the Darkness came back for me. I still don't sleep much because of it.

I became a drunk. Every penny earned or found, it went towards liquor. I'd stopped buying bacta entirely, and it ran out quickly. I didn't care. I joined more and more missions because the only time it didn't hurt was when I was killing others, when I was fighting. When I fight, my blood sings a song that has no music and has no lyrics, but is a song nonetheless. But once the fight stops… The song does too. I wanted to die. Before the second run in the Darkness, that man and the woman who claimed to be my sister were the only people I had in my life. After that… Not even them. I had no one. I was alone. So I wanted to die, and I signed up for as many missions as I could, hoping it would happen by them. Suicide by enemy, they call it.

But I was good. Too good. I kept racking up missions success after mission success. You'd think that would earn be some respect though, wouldn’t you? It didn't. People still couldn't stand me, or to be around or near me. I fought on every front that I could and it was still not god enough for this motherkrakking Confederacy.

And after three months, I met him again. And he blamed me for everything. I thought I was already broken and shattered, but after that conversation… I decided to just screw it, and do the deed myself. But I didn't want to just vanish, I wanted.. It sounds so krakking stupid but I wanted to leave something good behind. Something better.

So I took three days to construct and cast a blood spell. I built an entire memory structure of a life that had never happened, but had enough detail and meat to it to feel real. I even contacted a slicer and had them make sure it appeared right in the files wherever it mattered. And then I took that final step…

And there was no Scherezade anymore. Instead, there was Madalena Antares."

Scherezade paused. The spell that had gone so entirely wrong…

"Madalena was supposed to be everything I was not. Likeable. Like mother. The kind of person that walks into a room and smiles, and suddenly everyone loved her. Not me, with my baggage, and lack of people skills. She still had my abilities, it was still my body, but she was… Her. A different person. And she had no clue. By then I had two friends and I gave them clear instructions to not ruin it. To play along.

I was supposed to be dead. Gone. Not to return unless some very specific things happened. But I krakked it up. I didn't die. Instead of dying, I found myself in the space between dimensions, and the Darkness was still chasing me."

She visibly shuddered. There were not enough words in any language that she knew of, and she knew many, that could properly explain how the Darkness terrified her. How even after the first round in it, after those first seven hundred years, she'd become so afraid of the dark that she slept with a night light on, and even then was often too scared to do long hours, so she'd only sleep the minimum amount her body needed. After that second time though… She had stopped sleeping all together. Sometimes she would doze off, and then jump back up. If she hadn't known how to feed on the Force, the combination of the booze as main source of energy and almost complete lack of sleep surely ought to have killed her entirely.

"And then came the age of Madalena. Everyone loved her. She had no enemies in the Confederacy, only adoration and respect. She even found love, and going from mission to mission, there were rumors that they'd promote her real soon. But Madalena also didn't really sleep – when she did fall asleep, she was transported to where I was. The space between dimensions. And she thought it was a nightmare, and would scream and scream and scream until she woke up.

But then there was that mission in the Unknown Regions… Dozens of Knights Obsidian died. But Madalena survived. And not only she survived, but she knew the man was alive because of the Blood Hound abilities. The one that I loved. The one that I'd set a small thing in the spell for, so that whatever the nature of their relationship would be, if it existed even at all, she would always jump in if his life was in danger. And it had been. If it weren't for her, he'd be dead now.

On the way back to the core, she fell asleep and began the screaming, and he touched her in the attempt to wake her up. And then learned that while she was screaming like that, she was a conduit to the space between dimensions. To me. And again he blamed me for everything. I just wanted a hug because I'd been stuck there for months without human contact and all I wanted was a small hug before we fought again but even that he wouldn't give me. He said he'd bring out of the space between dimensions and that was that. Nothing else would ever matter."

And she had not seen him since. Been on the same planet as him, yes. Ironically, their home-ships were parked not too far from each other on Geonosis, and they both spent most of their time there between missions. But that had been the extent of it.

"When I came back… It turned out that Madalena was more than a bunch of falsified memories that I created. She's truly my sister – from another dimensions. I pulled her soul from there before it collapsed or something like that. So I got her another body, one that is biologically one of my many potential twins, and then I conducted the Dark Transfer to pull her from where she'd gone to when I was back in my body. It worked. She has the position of Knight Commander with the Knights Obsidian now, and she has love, and friends, and everything. And everyone loves her.

But me… I don't get that. When I confessed to changing the datafiles, the Vicelord ordered me executed. It ended up not happening but I'm still paying the price for that. And for everything else. "

There had also been the removal from the Knights Obsidian and her move into the Ministry of Secrets, but he didn't need to know that. That, as truly a secret. For all intents and purpose, she was a Pathfinder.

"I still can't sleep," she sighed, taking another drink in, "the words of the blood spell that I cast to kill myself are still on the walls of my ship. I can still sense him. And I have a piece of fabric from an old bed sheet that bears his scent, because when his scent is near, the Darkness retreats."

And that had been one of the cruelest things about it. To know that she had given her heart freely and openly to someone who had turned out to be her shield Against the Darkness, but that she, in the end, had been so insignificant to him in every possible way. And that moment had decreed how everything else happened after that, and no matter what she tried to do, she couldn't change it.

"And here I am, in the Coruscanti underground, fighting illegal pit fights, knowing that when I go home tonight it will be to an empty bed in which I will barely be able to sleep in, barred from my homeplanet where I'm supposed to be a Princess but weak people like me are unwanted and so I have never stepped foot on it since coming out of the pebble," Scherezade raised a glass, but there was no amusement on her face. The depth of her pan and loneliness could be seen by even the blind. "Cheers."

 

[Bedrovelse Hevn]

Hevn’s mind was always racing ahead. Always plotting, scheming, maneuvering, manipulating. His chest was always full of hatred, anger, pain, and sorrow. Only sorrow was left. Her tale hollowed a cavern through his thoughts and feelings that just left a resonating emptiness. A vacant place where only sorrow could flood in. And it did. Like a tsunami crashing through the mouth of the cave, drowning every last thing it could drag under tow. Hevn was lost in the wave. The feelings were so akin to his own that the dam within him burst forth and poured even more on top of Sherezade’s. He was throttled at the throat. Choking for air that couldn’t come. Drowning in her tale as he never had for another living soul in his life.

Bedrovelse Hevn is broken. Not by the might of a thousand star destroyers raining fire down upon him. Not by a titanic monster bearing its bone crushing weight upon him. Not by the sword, saber, or spell of any living man. Simply the tale of a girl. He could hear the insults rolling from the back of his mind, caking him pathetic and weak for feeling for her, but it was ultimately what set him apart from the rest. He could feel. He did feel. Every emotion on the spectrum was available to him and their potential infinite. Who knew when the day might come he was about to die, and this very story would drag his corpse off the ground with enough power to fight one more time.

Why do you love him so, Sherezade? Why waste the abundance of it you have on something that will not return it!? Why not flay him alive and dance in his blood? Words he would have chosen if he were sober. Words he’d have chosen in vain. I could fill your heart, fill your bed, I could slay the wicked darkness that harms you so. I could take your pain and make not just a queen, but an Empress of you! A warrior goddess. My. Warrior. Goddess. How splendid it sounded in his head. How terribly they would fail him if he so much as uttered the words.

What clouds your vision so? That you see only weakness when I see strength? Her loneliness and heartbreak are evident and viral. Was she clinging to the small, but important detail that the scent alone repelled her greatest fear? He could see the temptation in that, but nothing lasts forever. One day when her heart grew cold, would it still work? No. Time heals nothing. Time is only a means for wounds to fester and grow infected. By the inside, by the out, from the inside and the out.

Peace is a lie. There is only passion.

His passion was pouring energy from the shields, and the weapons, into the thrusters. He wanted to tackle her in a hug so completely engulfing that he swallowed her up in his massive frame, and would never let go. Her passion, however, did not call for him. It longed for another. If it was even a person, or simply whatever idea she had so firmly attached.

“Cheers,” he mimicked darkly. His voice was barely a whisper. He drains another glass he’s fallen numb to. Though the affects of the alcohol were still working behind the scenes. The walls around his own fragile psyche had toppled down into a heap of crumbled stone and ice. He was left empty and open for his feelings to rush through.

“Sherezade,” he chokes as tears fill his eyes and leak against his will. “To endure as you have, is not weakness. It is strength. So strong in fact that you cannot end yourself.”

He abandoned reason, abandoned hope, whatever he could try to comfort her weeping wounded soul, he would. He reaches delicately to place a hand in her shoulder, leaning in to her. He held a soft grip for just a moment before releasing, quite like he would offer a brother or sister in such torment. “If you could give it up, would you? If I could swallow all the pain in your soul, would you let me?” He sniffles a little as his tears drop into the liquor. If the cantina weren’t carrying on as usual, you’d have heard them. “I could,” give you everything, my Valkyrie “if you would but ask it of me.”

He releases her, righting himself in his seat, with some difficulty which he took notice of. If the bartender had been horrified at the prospect of their battle, he was in terror now. His familiarity with both stunning him into a tongue swallowing fear at their display of mutual vulnerability. He sniffles again, raising his arm to soak the beads of pain racing from his eyes. “Being alone is hard enough. Without the weight of the galaxy trying to end you. I would not see a star like yours die in such a way, if it can be helped.”

Who are you? What have you done to Bedrovelse Hevn?

[member="Scherezade deWinter"]

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

Cheers. Their glasses clinked against each other and Scherezade put hers down, staring at it. She didn't really want to drink it. She could empty entire caskets of liquor but there was never any joy in it. Even the taste was revolting. Gazing at it for a few seconds, she picked it up with her left hand and just poured the contents onto the bar, using the Force in tiny amounts to make sure the liquid flowed the other way and not to where she was resting her other arm. Signaling to the bartender, there was nothing in how she looked at him now that gave him the leeway to not refill her glass once more.

Hearing her name, she turned her head to look at Hevn, eyes frowning now. Were those tears in his eyes? She thought she was supposed to be the sappy one, the weak one that cried all the friggin' time. "How can it be strength?" she mumbled, pouring her next glass over the counter and getting the bartender to fill it yet again, "I broke. And eventually, I gave up. And when I wanted to end it all, to make the pain go away, I failed."

A hand on her shoulder. Part of her insides wanted to freeze, stop breathing at the touch that was happening outside of a melee battle, try to pretend it wasn't happening until it at last stopped. Another part of her wanted to show him just how quickly she could tear that entire cybernetic arm off and hit him over the head with it for daring to touch her at all without bothering to check if she was fine with it. And then came that final part, the part that wanted to just use the touch as an open door and lean in, to feel arms around her, in a way that spelled out nothing that would follow because nothing would follow, but… To be touch-starved, it messed with the mind. Perhaps she was simply not thinking clearly.

The parts inside of her were still battling each other when he asked his question and released her shoulder. Scherezade blinked in surprise, looking up again. "You can't," she whispered. This time, she did drink her glass, "I am not my former sister. I will not have a spell cast to make me feel no emotion and then pretend that this is the way it should be." Another glass. And another. "The Jedi made me an offer once," she laughed bitterly, "to erase from my memories anything that had to do with him. And her. And I couldn't take it. Because he was tied up to almost every memory I had, and to erase him would have meant that I wasn't me anymore."

Another drink. And then a third one for the spilling. "So you see," she laughed bitterly again, "I am no star. My eyes shine by the grace of the legacy to which I was born, but I shame it by mere existence."

Sighing, another glass was in front of her. But this time Scherezade picked it up and just held on to it, until the glass shattered in her grip. If any pain there was from the shards of glass, not a single flinch could be seen on her features.

"Tell me more of your damage," she half asked, half demanded, turning to him again as she tried to wave the tiny pieces of glass from her skin, "and why you sit here to listen to mine."

[member="Bedrovelse Hevn"]

 

[Bedrovelse Hevn]

So...it cannot be helped.

We all break. We’ve all given up. We all fail. The misery blinding her was frustrating him. She was a fool.

You cheapen my praise to the equivalent of dirt. You stomp and kick it like trash.

Hevn’s sympathy bleeds away. His pity limping weakly behind it, at her refusal to see what was so very obvious to him. Upon touching her his powers of empathy trigger. Anger and repulsion. His touch doesn’t linger long enough to wait for anything else. His familiarity with the ugly feelings should have made them predictable. He wasn’t even human. He is a monster. What comfort could a monster possibly offer a wounded soul. None. Absolutely none. There would never be solace at the end of his finger tips for the eternity that remained between him and whatever oblivion waited at the universes last breath. Nothing would ever bring itself to want his company.

Some die like a cigarette....

Will you burn quietly to ash girl? Would the Firestarter see fit to consume herself?

Some die like armored cars.

It was his fate to die violently. Erased only by a force of nature greater than his own. Locked in contest for superiority. There would inevitably be a day he met that end. It didn’t matter if it was fire, or rubble. It would be violent. It would be painful. He would struggle and break. He would give up. He would fail.

Some got love, but you’ll have to bury me alone.

Alone. Even now. Surrounded by faces and voices. Strange and familiar to him. They would all meet their ends in solitary agony. What did it matter to him how she chose to die? A sun that refused its existence would not shine. It would not burn. Only collapse under the weight of its own gravity.

Dumping her glass on the table and toying with it through the dark side of the force was the last straw. Childish.

He silently empties his feelings towards her, and called upon something familiar to replace it. He cuts the tsunami of sorrow away, thread by thread, and feels the cold chill of winter replace it. The blizzard pushes the flood away.

A fool for feeling at all. Be gone with it. Make sure it never comes again.

He spins his empty glass across the top of the bar with a flick of irritation. He’d had enough for one night. Being held akin to a Jedi makes his insides rot and twist. Vomit boils in his stomach. Even more bitterly than he snaps in reply, “Flash burn is for the kriffing cowards to brain wash children! To strip from them their rightful glorious power of darkness. I bring demons to the surface to be slain, not buried. You should check your tongue before assuming anything of me that I do not plainly wear upon my scars.”

An angry snort follows a breath that rumbles like thunder. “You weaken yourself surrendering to powers you cannot control. Your attachments. They are chains, and anchors to a past that clouds your future. I have spent as much time on this side as you have in the Darkness. Things do not get better. They get worse. Infinitely worse. The dark side of the force allows us to break destiny and shape it to our will. Is this the fate you will choose? I advise you to fight. If you cannot fight for something you love, kill something you hate. There is no salve for your pain. Only the flower of power you may pluck from the garden of your everlasting pain. With it your fists will crush iron and stone, not just drunk men twice your size.”

He could not imagine she gave a crying damn about his damage after his verbal onslaught upon her. So he held his tongue observing his display of crushing glass and plucking it. A glutton for punishment. Gluttony was a waste. A waste of strength, skill, power, beauty, heart, and god damn liquor.

[member="Scherezade deWinter"]

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

There were certain things that even Scherezade was sensitive to. When a deWinter yelled or screamed, those who knew them oftentimes knew they were perfectly safe. A barking dog rarely bites, after all. For one of her line to scream in rage was more often than not just a release of pent up emotions, but not something that was truly dangerous unless one was incredibly weak. But when true anger set in place… That was the cold anger the one that could topple down buildings, burst planets, destroy entire legacies.

And while she was not in that rage at that moment, she could feel something that resembled it coming from Hevn. It was enough to remove the fog from her eyes and make her look at him with sudden sobriety. She wasn't certain what it was within her words to cause that, but she was sure it was something she'd said or done wrong, as per usual. Wasn't it always her fault, anyway? Whatever happened, the blame rested on her shoulders, time and time again.

"I didn't-" she tried to explain after he spoke of her assuming, but now she was not only guilty without knowing why, she was confused too. What the heck was he speaking of? And slowly, she understood. It was, after all, not the first time she'd heard it, though this particular one was especially passionate. She wanted to block it a she always did, build up a wall inside her mind that would stop it all from entering her as she had put up gigantic walls behind which she had meant to die but instead was transferred to the space between dimensions.

"I," she began, "am so tired of getting told that!" she snapped right back at him.

With her fists she would crush iron and stone and not just drunk men twice her size. Very well. Soundlessly, her left and dominant hand, the one covered in glass, curled into a fist. There was no warning. Under normal circumstances, without pulling her arm back first, there would be little pack to her punch. But she was not normal, and this was not ordinary circumstances. Unless he moved or otherwise blocked her, Hevn would find his jaw connecting with her fist.

[member="Bedrovelse Hevn"]

 

[Bedrovelse Hevn]

No warning? Far from it. Stuttering over words you can’t summon unless speaking of your own pain and woe. You think I didn’t notice you stop plucking glass to curl that fist?

Prove me right, child! All you’re good for is the spectacle of your bloody endless TANTRUM!

Hevn was waiting for it after berating her. She wasn’t a word smith, she was a warrior. What was there to do with all that anger other than attack? The foolishness of attacking Hevn wasn’t beyond his comprehension. She wasn’t even willing to think it over. Hevn was in pristine physical condition. She had been fighting all night. They were both force users of potentially equal speed and reaction time, but his cybernetics were augmented for that edge over enemies of purely flesh and bone.

She had chosen poorly. Her left was all the way across her body, and the foolish thing had apparently drank enough to forget her......

BROKEN RIBS.

Hevn’s left hand rises to snatch her punch from the air at the wrist. A collective gasp erupts within the cantina as she begins the engagement. Hevn’s rage was already boiling hot. Sick of her self absorbed pathetic view of the world. All she cares about is her own misery. His wisdom and empathy deflected by the walls she erected for her pity party.

You think yourself fit to challenge me?

His pride flares in an explosion at such a thing trying to contest with him. The dark side flows through the fingers in his right hand to squeeze, twist, mangle, and smash her broken ribs. Undoubtably around the lung and all the havoc that would cause her insides. He stares with the fire of hell burning in his sulfuric corrupting eyes. Giving way completely to his animosity. He would twist her bones mercilessly in an act of torture, with no end in sight.

The cantina empties completely. Everyone including Hevn’s crew and the bartender ran. He was going to make her sing a beautiful song of her agony for all. Why fill just his ears when she could bellow her self loathing for all the Underworld to bear? He would drink in her pain as he caused it to maintain the cycle.

There was no point in exchanging words further. He intended to hear her scream far above any pitch his voice could reach her ears.

If you’re sick of hearing it, maybe it’s time you LISTEN. I wield your power greater than you, cur!

[member="Scherezade deWinter"]

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

It was true. She had forgotten her broken ribs. When was so used to operating with injured body parts, injured body parts became one's normal. But whereas one could normally function with bruises, broken toes, crooked fingers, and the such, it was a completely different thing to fight when your ribs were broken and poking into your lungs.

Scherezade didn't care that the cantina had emptied in the past few moments. She did not care that he was angry. He had come into her territory and passed judgement, and for what? She had not said or done anything wrong to him. By his request, she had spilled and bared herself.

You are still not good enough, she could hear the Darkness whisper in the back of her mind, reminding her of thoughts and phrases she had thought long ago silenced, yet now returned with their full might, you will never be good enough. This is what happens when you bare your soul. You are out of the Darkness and you will forever. Be. Alone.

That final thought came along with the twisting and mangling of her already broken ribs. She screamed all right, yet her physical pain was nothing compared to the one in her soul. The sound that erupted from her throat resembled nothing a human could ever produce, but more akin one would expect to hear from a mortally wounded animal. She barely felt the pain though. It was not her lungs or rib cage that were hurting now, but her very breathing. Some would say that this was a direct result of it; when your lungs were smashed by ribs, breathing was hard. And yet she knew in that precise moment that even had her everything physical been in pristine order, it would have been just as hard to breathe. It would have been just as hard to experience yet another betrayal. It did not even matter that she and Hevn were not close; she had opened up and bared her soul to him, and he had flipped on her before she delivered the first punch.

You think that just because others do not twist your insides means this is not what they want to do? the Darkness whispered, Gerwald abandoned you on the Fortressa and even now that Katrine is missing, he never seeks closeness to you. Daisy is busy with her new love. Josh is busy with his new love. None of them would ever have the balls to rip into your chest like that, but oh, how the wish they could. How they bask in the knowledge that you are left behind. And now this man. From your patheticness you took the chance and told him everything. Look now how he loathes the very depths of you.

Again she screamed, her hands coming up to her head, trying to get the thoughts out. It was not a spirit, she knew, and she was not possessed. But how did you explain the workings of an alternate dimension inside your head, one that every time you thought had weakened, came back to attack with a much stronger force?

But Hevn had not just messed her chest. In a certain way, he had done her a favor. The mess he had made of her lungs had caused her to bleed. Internally at first, so she hadn't noticed those first moments, but now the blood crept up, coming into her mouth and nose and out of it.

The Blood Hound was bleeding.

The Blood Hound was smiling. It was exactly what she needed to grab the strings of her focus back, to another and braid them back together again. No, her time was limited. There wasn't much of it left before she had to dip herself inside a bacta tank. But there were things she could do before that.

Scherezade did not need to move as she stood there, her breaths so shallow that it would easily seem as though she was not breathing at all. While it was true that she was a Warrior, fighting came in more ways than one. Her chin lifted, ever so slightly, ever so delicately, and she looked at Hevn. Looked.

Had he ever met a Blood Hound before, or someone with similar skills? She was uncertain. But it did not matter. She did not need to move an inch, did not need to lay a hand on him. Parts of him were cybernetic, yes, but parts of him were still so terribly human. And it was those parts that she called now, searching for the blood that resided in them. For organics needed the blood, even if they had additional bits and pieces that ran on other things.

And unless he found a way to make her stop, she would call his blood to her, pulling it from his veins and muscles, calling it through his skin until it built the pressure up and build nasty yet colorful bruises and then sprayed out of his body.

Blood soaked or not, you will still leave this place as you have entered it – alone, the Darkness giggled in the back of her mind.

[member="Bedrovelse Hevn"]

 

[Bedrovelse Hevn]

As his power mangles her insides his empathy senses and savors her pain. A lesson he intended to teach her about trifling with Bedrovelse Hevn. Within her screams he took no joy. He did not hate her. He only fed on her agony to maintain his dominance over her. His empathy though, it felt something, and heard something. A voice goading the downed woman that did not belong to him. It sounded like a war horn from within her. Though it was attached to her spirit somehow, it was not possession or a spirit.

Her look was everything. Retaliation made manifest. At the look of her gleaming emeralds his insides flex, his head pounds, his heart slams rapidly. Pressure was building throughout his entire body. She was bending the blood within him to push out and relieve him of the curse of living his miserable existence. He welcomes a taste of the pain he felt for her.

He endures, as the vessels begin to give way. Blood leaks from his pores like sweat. His stomach bruises quickly and ejects it like a waterfall. Beads roll down his face and stain it red. So much red. It was expunging from everywhere she could make him bleed. It too spills from her mouth, gushing in a pool as they engage in a deadlock.

With the force he lifts her body up, releasing his grip on her rib cage and lungs. He meets her gaze as he pulls her limp form through the air into a bear hug. He was only a head taller, but it was enough for his arms to wrap around her strong body and hold her close, aloft from the ground. As she reached him the blending her insides was over, his grip on her form was released, and everything changed.

Through his heart and into hers, he projected everything he thought and felt for her over the course of drinks. His sorrow, his frustrated, and legitimately his truest love for her struggle. Through his hands he begins to heal her ribs and lungs with the dark side of the force. The energy thrums through him while pain assaults every inch of his organic form. He mends someone else’s physical wounds for the first time since ever wielding sorcery or the force. He mends another.

He smashes his lips Scherezade in a kiss. One he hoped would destroy her focus. Decimate her train of thought. Release him from the torment she imposed. His openly bleeding face smothering hers as passion burns through the lock of his lips. She would be soaked in the blood she had reaped from his body.

As he hopes his essence can communicate what his words cannot, he reaches deeper. Into her darkness. He would silence it or die trying, if just for this one moment on this one night. In the depths of her mind he can hear it twisting her thoughts into wicked feelings. He wraps an indomitable hand around its mouth to silence it. Crush and break its mouth if he can. If only to shut it up for tonight. If he can quiet it, he would speak. A faint whisper plagued by his battle with the gamble he took. He was willing to save her and die to make it work.

“You.” He breathes as he breaks from kissing her. “Are not alone.”

[member="Scherezade deWinter"]

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

The taste of blood filled her mouth more and more by the second. There was nothing else she could taste, nothing else she could smell. Her Blood Hound senses went into overdrive, and it was only the kernel of a voice inside herself that was herself warned her of the danger, that this was not a good position to be in, that this was fatal.

Yet even her blood shot eyes could not tear their gaze away. There was an art to calling the Blood, to pulling it out of her enemies. Only once had someone betrayed her and she had not turned him into an enemy. She carried that pain within her with every single breath she took. Never again. The Darkness had been right. It had always been right. For so long she thought it wanted to torment her, but even in its cackling madness had it always warned her of the painful truth, the one that she never wanted to see herself. People would swear upside down that it lied and then go prove that it was only truth that it gave her. And still she chose to blind herself to it, even when it stared her in the face.

And the blood was coming through. She could see it, pouring out of him as well. Who would bleed out first, she wondered, who would first run empty of the liquid that kept the both of them alive?

Her feet left the ground. Scherezade cast a glance, but did not break her concentration. He was moving her towards him. Scherezade did not fight it – let him do that if he thought it would win him a chance at surviving the Blood Hound. She would find the way to make it through, she would find the way to get herself to a bacta tank before it was too late. But he…

He pulled her into a hug. Scherezade froze, her confused blink giving her shock away as she ceased to pull this blood, and all that had not already escaped is veins began to make its way back to where it was meant to be, the pressure within his body easing off already.

The pain inside her own body began to numb. Had she missed the point of no return so easily? She had come close to it so often, and she had been certain there had been at least fifteen minutes left, perhaps even half an hour if she got lucky. Not like this. Not so quickly. She could not meet the end as she was – remembered for her failures though they were dwarfed by her success, unloved and alone. It was better to just completely be forgotten, as though she had never existed. That was what her heart prayed for in that moment. If she were to die, better to just be forgotten, like ashes in the wind. No footprint, no lifeprint. Nothing.

But it was not to be. She could feel her insides begin to knit each other together, bones moving into place, lungs renewing. Scherezade blinked again in surprise, the confusion etched on her face only growing. Was he healing her? She could taste the darkside of the Force working through her body, and it felt like a lover's embrace, warming her up from the inside. It was one of the very few sensations of comfort that she still had left.

It hit her. Where bruises were never visible, where the soul only had so much it could take, his projection attacked the delicate strings that had over time somehow learned to hold herself together. Had she for a moment paused to consider what he might have been feeling as she laid her story bare to him, she would have expected pity, boredom, condescending. Not… Not sorrow. Not love. Not all anything that was related to any of those.

And suddenly his lips were against hers, and her eyes closed of their own accord. There was still pain inside her body, despite the mending, just as there was in his, and the threads that held her tiny pieces together threatened to shatter apart once more. The moment their lips made contact, a shadow appeared by then, something that had the vaguest shape of a human being, but lacking any sort of distinctive features that would mark even its gender.

The blood of Hevn's body mingled with hers as the both of them were completed covered in it from their tight embrace, the kiss not yet relenting. She could feel the fire inside her body, a fire that had been unkindled for so long that she had thought it had turned to nothing but dust and ashes. She gasped into him, but would not be the first to break it, refused to be the one to end it. She did not know her heart, who it waned, what it wanted. But she knew, she knew that she wanted this, whatever this at present was.

The shadow by her reacted. It could not be sent away and it could not be vanquished, but it was made uncomfortable. Hevn's manipulations had made it to grab where its own neck ought to be, a large mouth opening into nothing but pure and complete Darkness that was inside the shadow. It did not matter for neither Scherezade nor Hevn would be able to glimpse at the thing with their naked eyes, and its open mouth now silenced, its motions as though trying to remove something that was actively blocking it.

You are not alone.

Only now did the kiss break, and Scherezade blinked a third time, seeming to only now realize their bodies had been locked together in an embrace, that her arms had reached out for his body as his had for hers. She starved. Touch-starved had been the term coined for it. She starved for that sort of touch, for that sort of warmth. It was not the passion fueled event she had with her first man, nor was it the alcohol induced apathy she had with the second. This was a third kind she was feeling, and she wanted to explore it further.

The emotions sifted through her. She wasn't sure which were hers and which was his. But there, with the fire building inside her own veins, with the smell of the drying blood on the both of them, with the physical closeness, she wanted more of it. The emotions could wait for later. The cantina had emptied but she wanted… Something more private.

"Where is your ship?" she breathed heavily into him before leaning forward, her mouth hungrily seeking his.

[member="Bedrovelse Hevn"]

 

[Bedrovelse Hevn]

Exsanguination. What an end to meet Bedrovelse. Was she worth it?

Yes.

Why?

Because she proved you wrong.

Hevn trembles, defiantly standing against the embrace of death that wrapped its cold hands around his shoulders and whispered in his ear. EMPs could strip his cybernetics of function and use. So too did losing blood deny what little of his organic body remained. His heart could struggle, but not for long against such an attack. Adrenaline pounds through his body, and his heart booms like a drum being struck by giants. A lightheadedness steals rational thought from his grasp, delirium strikes like lightning. It was so much, so fast, what manner of sorcery was this?!

His teetering form braces against hers, as a tidal wave of shock rips through him. Her attack had ceased. Every assumption he made was scattered to the four winds. She was pushing in. Their lips tangling as her arms secured their lock around his own. His slacking strength lowers her feet to the floor. Her heart pounding against his. Her strong arms tight around him. Within the depths of her was silence. Whatever haunted he had left the two alone to reconcile this misunderstanding.

What solace could a monster offer? Some. Enough to fight and win. If only once. If only this one time. She would not forget it. What good could his finger tips do for any other than himself? They could heal. They could love.

Her closeness. The warmth radiating from her. It was a small taste of redemption. Thank you. He wanted to say it. I am so sorry. His remorse wanted to sob into her shoulder.

I am more! I can be something better. Someone worth having, maybe even worth keeping someday.

She had quelled his version of the Darkness as much as she had his. This small victory, in a cantina in the underworld, was the greatest he’d ever tasted. It was more fulfilling than any conquest. Achieved through compassion, and not a kill. With a hug and a kiss, not a mountain of corpses and a wake of destruction.

The excitement of the moment rises over his fatigue. Her hunger infects him. Blooming within and spreading fast into every reach of his being. His soul was now stoked to rival her needs. To rival her wants. The glorious sun in his arms chases away the chill of winter, and dries the tsunami of sorrow. The fire to satisfy every rising urge conquers all. He wanted her like he had never wanted for anything or anyone. He needed her. The feeling was foreign. It was terrifying him. It was welcome.

She asks where his ship is, and the message is clear. Their lips and tongues clashing more fiercely than their fatal strikes had only moments before. He couldn’t remember at just this moment. As his head spun by the loss of blood and the intensity of their passion. Too far, was all he could groan internally. I need you now!

This wasn’t the place. There had to be something closer. There would be if they could but find it. Somewhere to wash this blood away. Somewhere to have her all to himself. Somewhere to honor this Valkyrie. Somewhere to love her. To show her what it really meant.

He pulls back, nuzzling her with his bloodied face, opening his eyes to see his damage upon her. His hands find hers and grip them tenderly. With a somewhat forceful tug he softly says, “Don’t let go.” He didn’t need to drag her as she welcomes his lead. His eyes are blind to all but the glow of those beautiful emeralds gleaming just for him. His feet carry them to his ship without his eyes ever leaving her. With the need and want of her burning him alive.

The Firestarter. [member="Scherezade deWinter"]

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

She hadn't let go. Not on the way to his ship and not on his ship. At times she had clung to him like a woman to a man, and at times like a youngling to an anchor, arms and limbs either wrapping around him or demanding that they be wrapped around her. There had been no thought process during any of it. She did not want to think, and so she had found a way to shut her thoughts down, relying instead only on the way she could make herself feel through the body, make him feel through both of their bodies. And when at last they sank into the bed, covered in sweat and deliciously exhausted, she had once again come in for the wrapping and slept like that, her fingers curling atop of his skin into an unconscious embrace.

When her eyes opened a few hours later, Scherezade froze. It took a few moments before the memories sank in, and she remembered the cantina, remembered the man with the cybernetic parts whose name was Hevn, and remembered what she and Hevn had done. Her gaze moved, looking now first at his body against which she was still lying in an embrace with, and then up to his face. Oh. Then came the rest.

Slowly, she tried to slide her way out of Hevn's embrace, having no wishes to wake the man up. She wasn't sure what was supposed to happen after that; with her experience being what it was, all previous attempts had led into awkward and unwanted situations, either in the short or the long term. Would this be the same too?

She hadn't worn too many clothes last night, and she found her pants, shirt, and boots quite easily, but it was her weapons that took some time. She always carried a plethora of them with her, and from what she could glean, more and more memories returning, was the crazy about of time spent peeling them off her body. A knife here, a knife there, even her gun had somehow found its way into the refresher rather than neatly on top of a pile.

If something like this ever happened again, Scherezade smiled, she was going to have to be more organized about what she was doing with them. It would not be any good for her to lose one of the knives she was so attached to, or forget a glitter bullet behind. It was bad enough that she'd once before been arrested for them, even though they hadn't even been the one in use and the person who'd done something similar wasn't her. The ORC had arrested her anyway, while admitting that on that count, at least, she was an innocent.

At last, her weapons returned to her and her boots strapped on, Scherezade was ready to leave. She paused by the exit to the room, turning around a final time to look at the man she'd spent the night with. Hevn. He had shown her the previous night, projected very directly all he had thought and felt as she'd told her story. And while he had kissed her first, she'd been the one to take them to bed.

Was she supposed to wake him up to say goodbye? Was she meant to leave and let him awaken to an empty bed? She was not certain. Were there other options? She wasn't certain. About anything.

A moment later, she sighed, and returned to the bed, to sit at the edge.

"Hevn?" she said gently, her voice just above a whisper, a hand coming to his bare shoulder.

[member="Bedrovelse Hevn"]

 

[Bedrovelse Hevn]

There had hardly been a space to breathe between them since leaving the cantina. It was a beautiful dream. A thing beyond belief. Their hunger and need feeding one another until at last the strength to keep going abandoned their bodies. Still he didn’t let go. He wasn’t going to let the dream pass without stealing every second he could from her. His eyes did not close as her breathing grew soft. He lay awake, stroking her hair and skin as though tenderly tracing every feature so he’d never forget a single inch of her skin.

With a heave that breathing changed and he knew his dream had come to an end. As her body moved away his entire body still smolders with his want and need for her. Within his finger tips she did not seem to feel the same. The chaos and mania she surrendered to, that he surrendered to, had left her. At least, he did not feel repulsive, or anger, or disappointment, disgust....any of the feelings he feared to feel at her touch. When she left his side he screamed, prayed, she would simply relieve herself and return to rest. His luck was not so.

He feigns barely closing his eyes. A cold was beginning to sweep over his skin from within his soul. A moment he knew would come. There was no sense in shaming her with confronting him if quietly leaving is what she desired. He quietly chuckles within as she tries to collect herself and her things. He memorizes every movement. Every detail of her form. Carving it into a place within his mind for safe keeping. She kept as many weapons on her form as she had built walls within. All to protect herself. What he’d give to take their place. Every knife. Every bullet. To never part from her. Always have this feeling close to him.

It came as a shock that her figure moved towards him once her journey of the ship was complete. His eyes snapped open before she even spoke in disbelief. His name was music rolling off of her tongue. He adjusts, to sit at the edge beside her. There was a sternness in his face, but looking hard enough it was clear. He was battling tears. Fighting off the hard part where he’d be alone again until such a miracle repeated itself.

He takes a shuddering breath, composing himself enough to speak a little. “Scherezade. I didn’t think you’d say anything. I’m glad you did.”

He places her offered hand between his own two. His feelings radiate through them. I love you. His heart boldly, foolishly declaring something he could hardly know, for someone he hardly knew. It just felt it. It yelled what it tongue would not dare to hiss. It hammered louder and louder until it filled his head and his ears. His resistance manifested as the choking. Unable to say more. Just projecting what he could not say. That the feeling was still there and hasn’t changed. She wasn’t alone. He didn’t use her. She was special to him.

After staring at their feet in silence as he held her hand, he raises his chin and turns to look at her. He would keep stealing her seconds until she took them back for herself. Every one he swiped was more precious than the last. More precious than anything on any world he’d been to. She was the only diamond in this galaxy worth having. Fighting for. Dying for. Those emeralds glimmer for him.

His doubt, self loathing, self destruction and sabotage was absent from his thoughts. She kept his darkness quiet. He understood now what she meant in the cantina. Why it would be so hard to part from. Why she would go to any length to achieve it.

He smiles so softly it’s barely there.

[member="Scherezade deWinter"]