Private Deadringer

[Zaavik Perl]

I have dreams of dancing with the dead, but my feet won't keep the tempo...
​

Blood.

It had to be blood. Nothing else was distinctly that color nor that evident in its texture. When someone had seen enough blood, no pretender medium could fool them. Zaavik had certainly seen his fair share of it. Dreadfully distinct. Everywhere.

An overwhelming, indescribable need to move drove Zaavik forward. He waded through a crimson expanse, infinite in every direction he bothered to check. The father he got, it grew shallow and thick. Gore blackened like rot. Tar. Up to his knees now.

There was no more infinity in this hall of mirrors. Everywhere he looked, he saw his reflection, and dreadfully distinct tar. He kept moving, slogging through the thick stygian mire. Every muscle in his legs ached. Something wouldn't let him stop.

Then, people appeared in the reflections. Blurry faces and indistinct forms. Zaavik felt their eyes on him, diminishing him to nothing. They all pointed. They recognized him. No one was supposed to recognize him. Panic. He fled.

Hands gripped his ankles. He looked down, but all the saw was tar. Then, an arm. Horrible, tar-black men rose, amorphous below the waist. Eyeless. They grabbed him, tried to drown him beneath the tangible void. He fought, struggled, screamed. A dozen of them crawled across him, shoved him down, down, down.

The last sound he made was the gurgle of tar filling his lungs.

Then he was falling. Listlessly drifting through the void beneath the tar across an endless oblivion.

Falling.

That feeling, falling, it meant something.

Some part of him knew it did.

A deep part of his unconscious, the brain, knew what it was being told.

He wasn't breathing.



Lungs forcibly expanded, filling with air behind a gasp that rumbled rough like gravel. Involuntary jolt send him sitting upward with breakneck speed. One of his hands pressed against something soft and warm beside him to get there. Another wheeze, his chest expanded in almost exaggerated fashion. Panic returned, he took quick stock of his surroundings. He was dry, cold, and far less clothed than he remembered.

A dream.

Another, tame wheeze caught his breath. Air chilled his skin beneath the sheen of cold sweat he'd accumulated. Zaavik inspected his hands, turning them over in front of him, just to be certain this was real. An anchor learned after years of nightmares of such a frequency. He still hadn't quite remembered where he was, parts of his brain were still only just now beginning to turn from dormancy.

Just a dream.

 

[Darth Daiara]

Wake Up​

A snap hiss echoed out, a wash of red illuminating a set of severe, blue eyes. Aradia looked him over, attention dropping to his hands before snapping out to the room around them. There was no sign of life inside the musky safe house. The only disturbance in the force came from him. Her bare chest heaved in protest. She was alert with adrenaline, but rational thought took a few more moments to return.

Understanding softened her gaze. She snuffed out his saber and reached for his hand, encasing them back in darkness. There were no windows in the underground studio. It could have been three hours or five days since-- A blush hit her cheeks. She wrapped the thin blanket back over her skin and scooted closer, their legs entangled.

"Hey. We're safe," was all she said. Two simple words, but they defined everything. Her thumb rubbed a soothing circle on the hand in her grasp as she let him regroup.

Nightmares. Been there, done that.

 

[Zaavik Perl]

An eruption of crimson light coupled with a familiar droning triggered memory. He remembered where he was now. Respirations grew quiet, but didn't slow. Several tight blinks flushed the blur out of his eyes. Red light gleamed off the aluminiferous digits of his left hand. The extremity fluctuated between open and fist, joints resonating mechanical buzzes.

"We're safe."

Another blink. Yellow, bloodshot eyes floated over, found his other hand seized. They followed up the arm of the restrainer, met observing blues. Zaavik expelled a deep breath, squeezed the hand given. "Yeah," he murmured. Yet, he didn't feel safe. Those images were troublingly vivid. Something felt yet to be understood, as if it had been some kind of cryptic portent.

Something caught his peripheral vision drew his eyes off Aradia and toward the wall beyond. A tar-black handprint spattered on the wall above and end-table. A whispered gasp begot a flinch, he blinked again. Gone. Hallucinating? He chalked it up to not waking up completely before it occurred to him then that he shouldn't have been able to see that at all. It should have been darker in here, but it wasn't.

A dim, blue light illuminated the room on the half where he'd seen the apparition. His back straightened, staring sentinel from an elevated position until he found the source. A home assistant device lay on the floor projector-down, sending the light that should have been a hologram scattering from a point on the floor beneath it. A belt draped over the end table in its place. He vaguely recalled something having been knocked over.

Both legs swung out to one side of the mattress. Bare feet made light, fleshy thuds across the tiled floor as he strode around toward it. The Force coaxed it from the floor into his grasp. Holograms restructured, flickering with the changing light level in the room. A portrait of a Rodian within a bounty frame appeared, aurebesh prompts denoting priority bounties having changed. A work brief for bounty hunters, and a PSA for everyone else on who to look out for.

He set the device back onto the table, his finger an inch away from turning it off before his portrait appeared within the frame. Zaavik's eyes widened. His face had been plastered across half the galaxy, but now here too? Recollections of the dream started to worryingly line up. Had he seen the future in some abstract way? Every young Jedi was warned about visions like that. Products of the dark side, the Masters claimed.

Zaavik turned to Aradia, regarding her with a concerned look. Allyson knew, and right after Aradia had encountered her, his face pops up somewhere they thought was safe?

"But we're not. N-not really."

He was being stupid. Compromising everything by being so careless, not taking the heads of the hunting snakes. Worst of all he was putting Aradia in danger too. Suddenly for a reason that Zaavik couldn't describe, born of events hours earlier, that reality suddenly felt even more nerve-wracking than ever before.

A metallic cylinder flew across the room. Zaavik had ordered his saber to his hand. He stormed around the corner, into the hallway. Completely out of his partner's sight.

The sound of a door hissing open followed shortly by the distinct sound of his lightsaber igniting carried from elsewhere in the safehouse.

 

[Darth Daiara]

Aradia stared dumbly in his wake, the sudden turn leaving her stunned. "...Zaavik?" She called out, confused. Had she done something wrong? The haze of last night lifted and dropped her right back to harsh reality of things.

Maybe it was news of Korriban.

Life burst back into her limbs, a shirt shoved on haphazardly. Her saber jumped into her palm as bare feet thudded across the ground after him. It was hard to tell what he was doing but her gut told her it was bad news. Her hand flashed out, seizing his wrist before he could take a step further.

"Zaavik!" She protested, trying to make turn to face her. He looked crazied and she couldn't place why. ...Unless he blamed her for Allyson. She swallowed hard, last night's fears finding their way back to life.

She shook him to make him focus. "Where are you going? What did you see?" She would have like to have sounded a lot more commanding in that moment, but it was hard with bed head and looming dread.

 

[Zaavik Perl]

Purple locks were strangled into the grip of his fist. Grip as close to the skull as he could manage, a long violet tail draped from his grasp. It hadn't been cut in years, grown longer than even Aradia's. It was his single most distinguishing feature, making him discernable even buried within distant crowds. It hung from his scalp in the bounty portrait, giving every hunter who saw it a quick identifier.

"Stop!" he barked when he felt his wrist taken before he made it through the bathroom door. He hardly heard her inquiries through the echoes of his heart in his ears. Entirely oblivious to the fact that he was having some kind of episode, he yanked his wrist free and sliced the bundle of hair as close to the scalp as he could manage. The fibers sizzled, smoke billowing from his fist where the mane was still grasped.

Zaavik stared at himself in the mirror. It hardly reached his ears anymore. The burn-mangled tattoo across the back and sides of his neck was no longer hidden by lilac curtains. Pressure grip sensors killed the plasmatic blade as he dropped the hilt to floor, sending sharp echoed clatters across the bathroom. Hair fell from his grasp, littering the floor by his feet with his severed locks. The bottoms of his palms propped him against the counter's edge.

It was gone, but the color lingered unchanged.

Dreadfully distinct.

Cupped hands forced cold water onto his face, breathing heavily all the while.

 

[Darth Daiara]

Aradia yanked back, her tone putting her on edge. "Stop what, Zaavik, I don't und-" A gasp pulled from her throat, the smell of burnt hair saturating the room.

She stared at him in shock, her hands stuck in their passive upwards outreach. He was nearly unrecognizable in that moment, and it wasn't just the hair cut.

His dropped saber flew into her palm, confiscated. "Zaavik," she warned, her tone cautioning and severe.

"I need you to start talking, or I'm going to have to think something bad's coming and I'm yanking us out. I'm serious here. Tell me. What's going. On."

 

[Zaavik Perl]

Water streaked down his face, droplets bundling and dripping from the stubble on his chin. "I haven't been careful enough." The faucet squeaked, the steady stream dying off to a drip. Zaavik craned his neck to the side, staring square to Aradia. Hysterical severity lay under a guise of drowsiness. "We picked this sector because my face wasn't plastered across it, remember?"

A pause.

"You saw it right?" he asked. He hadn't considered whether or not she could've seen the projection on the device across the room. "Can't even be safe here anymore. Before we know it, every board in the galaxy will have my stupid face on it." The question of his rash behavior still hadn't been an answered. He'd always taken it seriously, but losing composure like this was out of character.

Zaavik had to wonder if Aradia's fleeing from his old Master had anything to do with it.

"I'm sorry-" he murmured, diminished.

 

[Darth Daiara]

His shoulders crumbled. She dared a step forward, his saber chucked out into the hall as she went. There would be no more plasma near heads today. Not if she could help it.

"Is that what this is about?" She echoed, shock gentle in her tone. She reached out again and rested her hand on his shoulder. "So we'll lie low. We'll a find a place in the chit middle of now where and we'll wait it out. There's thousands of bounties out there. It'll blow over." She squeezed his shoulder and shook him a little, a playful edge entering her words.

" 'Make a home and have a feth ton of kids', remember?"

Her eyes flickered to the bathroom door. News of Korriban would be plastered on the holonet by now. She itched to move towards it, but kept her attention squarely on him.

"We've got this."

 

[Zaavik Perl]

Small smile and humorous scoff evoked from her teasing broke his austerity for a moment.

"Yeah, but-" The relief didn't last long. Something was still bugging him despite the gentle reassurance. He sat onto a closed toilet, rubbed his hand over his forehead and through what was left of his hair.

Yellow eyes gazed upward, some vague sense of desperation behind them. "Have you ever had a portent?" His query was posed in the same concerned tone one would expect to use on an injured or distressed loved one. "You know, seen the future?" Nearly a whisper this time, as if the notion was crazy.

"When I was a youngling, the Masters would warn us that auguries were a product of the dark side..."

He hesitated.

"I think I saw them catch me."

 

[Darth Daiara]

Aradia's expression caught.

"They don't always have to happen," she reassured, though even she wasn't sure. She couldn't recall if she had ever had a true vision. She certainly got hunches, and with him they might even come with a picture, but a full blown spector?

Concern etched into the corner of her eyes. She pulled away from him and ripped into the counter.

She said nothing to him, yanking out boxes and tearing them open with energy that matched his own. It wouldn't take long to see why. She pulled out two boxes of black dye. "It won't happen," she swore, digging out scissors and gloves to match. She had bought the kit on the off chance that she needed to mask her own hair on the run. It would do.

"Wet your head," she urged, her tone sharp.

 

[Zaavik Perl]

Zaavik expected her to dig further. Did she really think so highly of him, or believe so much in his aptitude that all it took was telling her and she believed him? Skepticism would be his initial reaction to anyone claiming to see the future. Yet, she believed him enough, with very little challenging, to be concerned about what he'd foreseen.

It doesn't have to happen, she said. Better yet, asserted that it wouldn't. Zaavik had his doubts. It was vivid, absolute. Nothing about it seemed avoidable. Inevitable. It scared him, as much for her as for himself.

Could a dye kit change the future?

She was the Sith here, so if anyone would know...

He nodded, stuck his head under the sink as the flow squeaked back to life. Still adjusting to the fact that he'd chopped it off only moments earlier, the speed at which it was sufficiently soaked caught him off guard. He pulled his head from under the faucet, turned to Aradia. It just barely touched his ears now, some hairs in the front intermingling with his eyebrows. Comparatively pitiful to what it'd been before.

"Okay," he signaled, sitting back down to be closer to her level.

 

[Darth Daiara]

Aradia let out a shaky breath, her hands weak with the exertion and adrenaline of waking up from the dead of sleep in a fright. It was his shirt she wore, and only his shirt. It was a reminder of just what she had to lose. The chance for a real life was in her sight-- no servitude, no wars...

She couldn't lose it. She couldn't go back to how it use to be. She could be half a person anymore.

I wanna take everything into my own hands and live."

She wanted to live.

She steadied her hand and took a sizzled lock through her fingers, the scissors snipping the burnt ends right off. She had cut hair before. It was no profession, but she didn't think twice about evening it out and erasing the evidence of what he had done.

He really did look different with it short. Her eyes caught along the tattoo at his neck. Her own skin tingled. She had her own, but she said nothing on it, moving on in solemn silence. Hair fell between her toes.

"When shops open I will go. I'll refuels us, I'll get supplies-- I'll need you to wipe the ships hard drives. It's Vestas, but we dont know who might come for it once she's gone."

Once again, her thoughts drifted towards the holonet. Maybe she didn't want to look. Maybe she didn't want to know. She refused to shed a tear for any of the dead, but would that extend to the person that had given her everything when she had had nothing?

The hairs on her arms rose. She swallowed hard.

 

[Zaavik Perl]

Zaavik hadn't had a haircut in years. It felt weird to have it done now. He would have been content to stop at his haphazard severing. Clearly, she wasn't about to let him look so ragged. Guilt boiled up from within him, feeling as if he'd ruined what should have been a peaceful night. Riding the high they should have shared was cut away before its time. What should have been equanimity found a reason to be dread.

He caught sight of himself in the mirror from his the peripheral. Listless gazing kept him still while she worked. No energy could be committed to a reaction in regards to how he could look so different so quickly. That was a good thing though, wasn't it? Studying his face, he squinted as the stubble on his face with scrutiny. For a moment, he considered growing a beard. No, that would be trying to hard. Not to mention it would take too long.

"You took Vesta's ship?" he inquired with muted exasperation. He nearly felt an admonition coming on, but resigned himself to a sigh. It would be too harsh not to consider the why and instead criticize the move, even if it was a dangerous one.

"I'll take care of it," he assured.

Zaavik had to wonder about Vesta, too. If it wasn't Allyson's poking around making his face appear...

Add it to the list.

 

[Darth Daiara]

"She told me to," Aradia counted softly. Vesta had told her to do a lot of things yesterday, many of which she had ignored. She frowned, quickly reminded of the unfinished lesson and the odd request she had never fulfilled.

Take the ship and find ...what's his name. ... Help him.

Help him do what?

She ran her fingers through his hair, the last of the burnt edges dropped away. In its place was an edgy, evened out cut. She didn't make it much shorter. She didn't want to. But she brushed it out of his eyes and cut some shape into it too. She didn't realize the ease in which she fixed his mistake. She had the skilled hands of a slave.

She stepped around him and left him to his reflection, the dye pulled out of the box. "Towel around your shoulder." Unless they wanted to dye him too. She stopped short and looked up, a bit of amusement in her eyes as she considered it. She dismissed the thought with a wordless shake of her head and mixed the paste in a bowl.

"Tell me about it. Them catching you. Where was it. When. What were you wearing. Tell me every detail." And then they would avoid it.

She didn't look at him, expression intense as she plopped the first bit of black dye on his purple head.

 

[Zaavik Perl]

"She told me to."

Zaavik didn't like the sound of that. Did that mean she knew where they were? Every little detail could have been a deceptively deep machination in some Vesta plot, as far as he knew. Not once could he recall even laying eyes on the Shifter, yet he assumed their intentions to be the absolute worst. Why wouldn't they want him out of the way? Wouldn't it serve to make Aradia even more like clay?

The Towel made a pitiful poncho-shape around his shoulders. Spray-on dyes were the only he had any experience with. The same kind that would come out with the right solution. Whatever Aradia was mixing implied a kind of permanence that invoked uncertainty.

At the very least, he hoped it wouldn't look stupid.

"Tell me about it. Them catching you. Where was it. When. What were you wearing. Tell me every detail."

An uncertain, hesitant sound emanated from his throat. "I dunno, it was more abstract than specific... but it was vivid. It wasn't anything like a normal dream, I'm certain it was trying to tell me a fortune. It felt the same as the little presages when someone is going to fire or strike at me." When considering minor, Jedi accepted precognitive abilities, far more understood and proven than claimed future-sight, comparatively this had to be something.

 

[Darth Daiara]

Aradia frowned. "That's not very specific..." Silence enveloped them, dye glopped on and combed through with methodical parts. The dreaded doubt came to mind, not so much in him, but in the threat behind what he saw.

"You sure it wasn't just a nightmare?"

Because wouldn't it be perfect if it was?

She didn't want to face off anyone again, not since Vjun, and not since Allyson. Both had challenged the concept of what it meant to be ready . What'd that even mean anymore?

Definitely not what she had been doing, that was for sure.

"Like a really, really strong nightmare?"

 

[Zaavik Perl]

"That's not very specific..."

"I know, but-" Zaavik hadn't realized until now that he inadvertently dodged the question, in a sense. He feared might actually start thinking he was crazy if he divulged everything.

"I've had nightmares almost every night for as long as I can remember." The confession was spoken as if it wasn't anything more than a mundane fact. To him, it wasn't, he'd gotten used to it by now. Wouldn't anyone?

"Never had anything like that, plus I-"

Hesitation.

"I saw something from the dream after I woke up. By the projector, and then it has my face on it when I pick it up... That can't be a coincidence, right?"

Please don't think I'm insane.

 

[Darth Daiara]

Dread dropped in her stop like a rock, dragging her down... down... down...

"No," she admitted through the bump in her throat. "Probably not." Silence enveloped her, stress over the unknown lending to an overtired jitter of her hand.

"Maybe Vesta made it," she countered, the spark of hope masked from her tone. She knew better than to feel anything about anyone when it came to war. She had long since learned to lock her emotions in her chest. It was the only way she got by-- the only way she had coped with his supposid death too.

And she had been wrong about that. Why couldn't she be wrong about this.

 

[Zaavik Perl]

"You really think they'd bother to warn me about anything?"

He nearly added something else to the end of that sentence. How exactly he had the restraint to dodge the fight they could have just had was beyond him. Better not to question it.

"I'd be concerned if they knew in the first pl-"

Words halted when the realization that she was just being hopeful hit. Zaavik sighed.

"I don't know, maybe," he murmured with resignation.

 

[Darth Daiara]

She sighed.

In a perfect world, the two people she trusted wouldn't hate each other. They didn't even need to be friends, if they could just act like the other's existence wasn't a threat to their own-- that would make things a lot easier for her.

That wasn't being fair to Vesta though. Up until this point, the woman had keep a large birth between her opinions and Aradia's personal life. But it was what she imagined those opinions to be.

She didn't trust easily. Pessimistic to a fault, though the woman might counter she's a realist...

Aradia caught herself and shut down the thought. It was no good thinking on the lost.

Aradia said nothing, not plying into the conversation any further. She stripped off her gloves and sat on the edge of the sink instead. "It needs to sit 40 minutes," she reported, her chest squeezing further with stress as she changed the topic.