Private Dark Harvest

[Sibylla Abrantes]

​

Fenn Stag

The weight of it settled fully then. Not just Fenn's words, but what lived beneath them. This was no metaphor, no exaggeration. It was something done to him and is still happening. A government that bred him for war. A body engineered to endure. A mind left to carry what no one had thought to heal.

I know I am insane. I wasn't always like this.

And while her heart raced and a sense of dread and trepidation stirred in her stomach like acid with every word, Sibylla did her best to maintain a strong, supportive front.

For what sort of woman would she be if she could not hold her composure when Fenn was forced to do so every day with something far worse and insidious constantly pressing at his mind?

"A mind pushed far enough, long enough, will bend. Even break." Sibylla said quietly when he spoke of insanity. "That does not make you less than, it makes you human."

She swallowed hard, taking a deep breath of cool air.

"I know a Jedi Healer," she continued, choosing her words carefully, "Lady Corazona von Ascania . I have gone to her myself when questions of the Force and the mind became… difficult to carry alone."

Sibylla did her best to try and keep her voice calm and level, even as her heart continued to hammer under her breast.

"Perhaps she could help discern what lingers within you. Whether it is truly a demon, a ghost, or a sickness born of poison and ritual. If there is anyone I would trust implicitly with matters of the mind and healing, it is her."

A pause, and then she added quietly.

"You were not always like this," Sibylla told him, echoing Fenn's words back to him as a tether to a singular line of truth amidst all the turmoil he'd confessed. "...and that tells me something important."

She drew a slow breath.

"It means this was done to you. And what is done… may yet be undone. Or at the very least, understood."

 

[Fenn Stag]

ONCE WAS



"A Jedi."
​

The word rolled off his tongue not quite like venom, but more like sour fruit. Fenn's eyes moved away from the landscape back over to Sibylla. His hand- his remaining real one, seized her wrist. He was still for a moment, to show her that he meant no harm- his thumb finding it's place on her wrist. He stood still for a while, approximately seven seconds.

"Quite an experience, fear, danger. I assure you-" He let his hand fall back down to his side, his posture relaxing. "You have nothing to fear or be apprehensive about." He realized it was the first person he'd touch in a long time.

If only the sadness outweighed how pathetic it was.

"Perhaps it's punishment. A blood libel, at best." He looked down at his mechanical hand. "For all the wickedness." He stared at his hand for a while, the realization that he wasn't completely far gone washing over him.

"Do you think she can do anything for me- truly?"


Sibylla Abrantes

 

[Sibylla Abrantes]

​

Fenn Stag

The movement was sudden. Too fast. Fenn's hand closed around her wrist, her breath catching at how fast he moved, his wrist encircling hers with firm strength, but restrained in its power. In the distance, Sibylla caught the subtle shuffle of boots as the guards already shifting forward.

Sibylla did not pull away.

She lifted her free hand instead, palm angled outward in a quiet command. Hold.

"It is alright," she said, trying to keep her voice steady despite the way her heart lurched into her throat as if to choke her. She forced herself to breathe. Slowly. Evenly. In and out. In. And Out.

I assure you… you have nothing to fear or be apprehensive about.

Fenn;'s words echoed as she met his gaze...and in that moment, she believed him.

Perhaps it was faith. In Shiraya. In grace. In the Goddess who had cast aside divinity itself to bring peace to the one she loved. Sibylla had lived through Vere's grief, through Set's corruption, had felt the lingering ache of that tragedy brush too close to her own soul to dismiss belief now.

So she trusted.

In her faith.
In her gods.
In what stood before her.

In Fenn.

When she spoke again, her tone was gentle, unwavering.

"I cannot promise you a miracle," she said softly. "But Lady Corazona von Ascania is a healer before she is anything else. If there is a cause to be found, a way to ease what burdens you, she will try. With empathy. With care."

In that she was certain.

"And if there is hope to be found at all," Sibylla added quietly, "I believe she would look for it."

 

[Fenn Stag]

LET GO OF ME

​

There was a silence that was unlike the others before it, without tension and with more apprehension. It was a quiet moment of reflection, fear, and remembrance.

"Hope is a strange word to me, in concept. Foreign, alien. Do you often feel it? Or are you just faithful to your Gods and designs?"


Sibylla Abrantes

 

[Sibylla Abrantes]

​

Fenn Stag

Hope and Faith.

How those two words were threaded together, Sibylla mused as she drew in a slow, quiet breath. She took a moment to continue to let them percolate before she let out that breath slowly as though ordering her thoughts before giving them voice.

"I do feel hope," she said at last, quietly. "...although not always, and certainly not without effort, but often enough that I know it well."

Sibylla's gaze dipped for a moment in reflection, thinking of the Gods of Naboo, Vere, Set, of the fragment still within her and how that had changed her, before returning to him.

"And I am faithful," she continued, "though perhaps not in the manner one might expect. I do not believe the Gods arrange every step before us. There is free will...where my choices and my path are my own."

The brunette gave a brief, thoughtful, but hesitant pause, musing over the series of events in the past three years that led to her here. From the connection of Vere, to that Fashion Show on Nar Shaddaa, to Mauve, and now here.

And after a moment, she continued.

"Yet I believe the Gods make use of what we choose and what is presented to us. They shape our actions, our failures, even our missteps, toward a greater design. Not through command, but through guidance."

She exhaled softly.

"I have met Shiraya. I have known Vere. I have seen what love, grief, and sacrifice can create even for the divine. That is where my faith rests. Not in perfection nor in a destiny devoid of choice, but in purpose that may still be found because we are allowed to choose."

The expression over her heart shaped face softened into an unfiltered earnestness of her faith.

"So when I speak of hope, Fenn, I do not mean blind optimism. I mean the belief that even a fractured path may yet lead somewhere of worth. That there is purpose that can be wrought form it. That what you choose next matters...not because it was decreed but because it is chosen."

She met his gaze steadily.

"And sometimes, hope begins with nothing more than the belief that one's story is not yet concluded."

 

[Fenn Stag]

GLORY BE​

"You have reason to hope. I don't."

He looked at his hands, curling them into fists a few times. He spoke again. "Your Gods. Do they only watch over you, guide your beautiful planet, and it's beautiful planet, to hope? Or do they turn a callous, cruel eye to the plight of so many across the stars?" Tired, cruel eyes flicked over to her.

"When the Crusaders came to Naboo and took what they wanted- marched on your cities, burned and pillaged and killed, were your Gods there? Did you feel their absence? Was it cruelty, or indifference?" A pause, with little time for her to respond fully.

"I'm jealous of your faith, your belief. But I've seen the cruelty of the galaxy, experienced and caused it, too much to believe in anything other than the fact that at some point, I will die. And whatever comes after, will." His eyes flicked behind her, in the garden again. A shadowy figure stepped around his vision. Not walking, not floating. Like a slideshow of images, instead of walking. Cruel, oily shadows on his frame. But not malice.

A silent watcher. A lurking wolf.

​

 

[Sibylla Abrantes]

​

Fenn Stag

Sibylla listened as Fenn's questions spilled out. Not accusations so much as wounds pressed open by exhaustion, and she felt the weight of it press on her own chest as well.

There was a lot to unpack there, but she did not blame him.

"Just because I have faith does not mean I do not have emotions," Sibylla said quietly. "I am human, Fenn. You ask if the Gods watched when Naboo burned, well I felt fear. I felt rage. I felt the temptation to believe that allowing that to happen meant indifference."

She paused, choosing her words with care.

"But I chose to believe that silence is not abandonment. That even when the Gods do not intervene as we wish, they do not turn their faces away. The galaxy is cruel, Fenn. I will never deny that. And I do not blame you for struggling to believe in anything beyond survival."

Another breath.

"I cannot claim to know the will of the Gods... in fact some might call it the will of the Force. Perhaps they are the same, perhaps not. What I do believe is that their guidance is not always loud. Hope often takes shape through people, through choices, through how we treat one another. It does not rest on me alone… but it begins with me and the actions I choose to take."

Her gaze softened.

"Absence can feel cruel and indifferent...and sometimes the noise inside us, and around us, is simply too loud to hear anything else. Clearing that noise takes time. Focus. Patience. But I believe the whisper is still there, whether we hear it or not. It does not leave us simply because we cannot feel it."

She exhaled slowly.

"But I chose to believe that silence is not abandonment. That even when the Gods do not intervene as we wish, they do not turn their faces away. The galaxy is cruel, Fenn. I will never deny that. And I do not blame you for struggling to believe in anything beyond survival."

She met his tired gaze.

"You say you have no reason to hope. That is all right because even now, you question. You challenge. You ask why. That tells me something in you is still reaching, even if you do not call it hope.... and if that is the case, then I will hold hope for you."

She gave him a faint, sincere smile.

"...And perhaps, one day, you will feel it again for yourself."

 

[Fenn Stag]

​

"...And perhaps, one day, you will feel it again for yourself."

Those words seem to linger on him more than the others. He passively listened to the others, a crescendo of noise cascading his ears. A higher-pitched scream lay in his mind, biting at the edges of his consciousness. His neck twitched again, his eyes squinting and his face clenching. But when she spoke the last-

He took a deep breath.

"Life for a Mandalorian is being resolved to being without hope. Only surviving." He said. Not in a defeated way. Not without resolve. Just matter-of-factly. He turned his head towards her.

"The darkness that lingers at the borders of the Republic. The sweltering maelstrom of malcontent and hatred, cruelty and malice without end... I hope you never see it. I hope that your only imagery of darkness lies at my words, at far off visages of screens words in your hallowed chambers. Poems and songs. I hope that dearly for you, Lady Abrantes."

His eyes flickered up to the stars. Watching them. As if expecting a raining hellfire at any moment. He was never relaxed the entire conversation. Always tightly wound, always ready to run or fight.

"But I feel that it'll come to you. And then, unfortunately, you'll have some inkling of an idea what it's like to be me."

​

 

[Sibylla Abrantes]

​

Fenn Stag

Sibylla did not argue with him. She stood beneath the winter stars, the wisteria's bare shadows stretching across the stone, and let his words settle where they would.

"Then may Shiraya be with us, for both our sakes," she finally responded quietly, more understanding than agreement, because in truth, while one may hope that one does not see the hatred, cruelty, or malice without end in the universe, one could not be so sheltered their entire life.

So, in that, Fenn was right in his feeling that it would come to Sibylla. For it was not a question of if.

Only when.

And while the thought sat with her in that heavy weight, Sibylla still chose to believe. To hope. But she understood now that belief would one day be asked to hold its ground in ways she could not yet imagine.

If she had known how close that moment truly was, she might have lingered in the quiet a little longer.