Private Elegy of the Spurned

[Thessaly Veruna]

The venue had been built to impress the military mind, not the artistic one. Angles upon angles of smoked transparisteel and brushed durasteel stretched upward, as if the very geometry was meant to shame Naboo’s softer domes and marble halls. Every surface gleamed with severity. Water did not fall naturally here, it sliced in sheets from unseen seams in the walls, tumbling at sharp, artificial diagonals into recessed pools that hissed with light. The entire room was alive with the chatter of contractors and officers, voices bouncing harshly from stone and glass while holographic war machines rotated above them in slow, silent arcs.

Thessaly had given it half an hour. Long enough to smile at the right men, to offer the right nods, to make it known that her coin now whispered through more than one of their precious contracts. Long enough to remind them that her husband's ruin had left her neither powerless nor meek. And then...she was bored. Their flattery was too eager, their laughter too nervous. She had not dressed to waste herself on sycophants.

The bar was tucked beneath one of the angular waterfalls, its black stone counter lit from within so that it glowed faintly like some alien mineral. Here she took her place, gown alive with every fractured light that touched it. Sequins glittered like a night sky in motion, drawing the eye down the long line of her back where only the thinnest of straps dared restrain the fabric. She leaned one elbow against the counter, fingers idly circling the rim of her glass, her posture a study in deliberate invitation and disdain.

If they wanted her attention, they would come to her. And if one particular man found her first...well. She almost smiled. Fate had such a wicked sense of timing.

Cassian Abrantes​

 

[Cassian Abrantes]

Thessaly Veruna ​

Cassian had not intended to come. He had told himself several times between where he arrived and the hall. Duty, not curiosity, had drawn him here, duty to Naboo's people, to the soldiers whom he would be fighting beside as they stood beneath the machines paraded above them like toys of polished death. But as his reflection slid along those mirrored walls, he realized that duty alone would not have brought him into her orbit again.

Shadows spoke often, and they told lies just as well as truths.

The light was wrong in here. Too sharp, too surgical. It caught the edges of every face, turning smiles into grimaces, ambition into hunger. Cassian moved through it like a shadow among beams, silent save for the echo of his boots on stone. He listened, at the clinking of glasses, the soft hiss of water falling not from grace but design. It was a room built by those who thought the galaxy could be ordered if only they sharpened enough angles. A perfect stage for her.

He saw Thessaly before she saw him. Of course she would take the bar as a throne, light draped across her like adoration. The gown glittered like it had been stitched from starlight and deceit, her posture poised to invite, to challenge, to claim. The crowd had begun to orbit her already, moths to a flame that offered no warmth.

Cassian felt the familiar tightening in his chest. Hatred was too easy a word as it lacked the shape of what he felt. Contempt, perhaps for the way she twisted ruin into opportunity, for the way her husband's fall had become her ascent. Once, he did pity her. Now, he saw only the precision of her cruelty, the satisfaction she took in outliving love, if it could be called that.

He approached anyway. Not for her. For them, her money was spent in the right places, so he was forced to make his appearance and at least show some gratitude. He would look her in the eye and remember that there was a time when her smile could almost pass for human.

"Thessaly." His voice cut through the hum like a blade drawn clean. He gave a small bow, enough to pass for mock respect. "I see you've managed to turn profit into performance art."

 

[Thessaly Veruna]

"Art?"

She laughed. Not sardonic. Not sarcastic. Not even a hint of the malice that was often laced in her words. Instead, there was melancholy.

The way that nobility had talked about her when she was nearing adulthood. As if they counted down the days. Counted down the moments to her becoming of age, and being a viable prospect. Even now, she remembered their eyes. She remembered the way that they spoke in hushed tones with her father, while looking towards her. They had bartered for her. And Remus Veruna had taken the highest offer.

Art. Since she had grown into womanhood, she had always been considered a masterpiece. And when she had pleaded with a man of honour to take up the brush, and make her his own, he had declined.

And now, he stood there mocking her attempt at making a life for herself despite what the men of her family had forced upon her.

Thessaly turned to face him, sipping from her repugnant wine. Naboo's vintage really was lax this year.

"Cass..."

His name caught in her throat.

"...Cassian."

She had heard he survived an attempt on his life. Such a shame.

"Still a bachelor, I hear?" She leaned against the makeshift bar, her wine glass lingered at her lips. "You must be well equipped at frakking yourself by now. So, why don't you just...run along and keep doing what you are good at."

Cassian Abrantes

 

[Cassian Abrantes]

Thessaly Veruna ​

Cassian did not flinch. He had expected venom, Thessaly's tongue was sharper than most vibroblades but the sound of her laughter caught him off guard. Not cruel, not mocking. It held weight, something closer to the hollow ache of memory than triumph. And for an instant, before the mask reformed, he almost saw the woman she might have been.

Almost.

Then came the sting, her voice curling his name like smoke around a flame, the bitterness spilling from her lips more potent than the wine she toyed with. The words were meant to cut. They found their mark, but not the way she hoped.

He met her gaze, unflinching, level, and with the quiet steel of someone who'd already endured worse than her cruelty.

"Still throwing stones from glass towers, Thessaly?" His tone was calm, stripped of heat, but every word struck true. "You speak as though the ruin you live in wasn't built by your own hand."

He took a measured step closer, not to intimidate, but to ensure she saw herself reflected in his eyes, not as the glittering phantom she pretended to be, but as the architect of her own cage.

"Your father sold you. He sold everyone. You weren't the first name on his ledger, and you wouldn't be the last." His voice dropped, quiet enough to force her to listen. "But you had a choice in what you became after. We all did. But you don't have a heart, so you fail again."

He let the silence hang a moment, broken only by the engineered hiss of water striking stone.

Cassian inclined his head once, the gesture devoid of mockery a soldier's courtesy to a ghost of what might have been. But she never would get that chance.

"Why did you come back?" Cassian's drifted from the tone of calm to stern and the ghost of vengeance, as the thoughts in his mind drifted to the night of her return and the beach, blood and sand.

 

[Thessaly Veruna]

She held her breath. Her heart raced. The sound of blood pumping faster throughout her body drowned out all the ambient sound of the meeting hall.

Slowly, her poise returned. Her nails tapped at her wine glass, before turning towards Cassian. He towered over her. He with his broad, muscular shoulders. His jawline of steel. She was slight, tiny in comparison. She leaned into the dichotomy as her fingers curled around his shirt and she slowly pulled her chest against his.

Her eyes drifted upward. She breathed in slowly, taking in that musk that had once been an allure, but now made her feel like wretching.

"My father is in prison. My husband is dead. My bastard of a brother distracted by bedding your whelp of a sister. This is the only time," she shook, only slightly, but noticeably, as her long buried rage boiled to the surface, "in my entire...gods forsaken...life...I have...been free."

She smiled. Lips shaking as she boiled within. "I was sold, as you so eloquently say, to a wrinkled, blood and liquor scented man that was old enough to be my grandfather," he free hand walked manicured nails up his chest, and slid their edge along his jawline, "and every time he took me as his conquest..."

Her voice cracked. Vulnerability threatening just for a moment to creep through.

"...every time his lips found my neck, and his hands my body...I was reminded that it could have been someone else. I had begged that other man. Years ago. I begged him to take me away from my lot. But he cast me to the demons so that they could tear my soul asunder. All for his...honour."

She let go of Cassian and stepped away. Visibly shaking, she steadied herself on the bar.

"And now that man calls me heartless."

Her hand grabbed for the wine glass, and for a moment she thought to throw it on him. Instead, she tipped it back and down the remained of the sour, dreck. It was enough to bring her some control to her senses. Her eyes lowered again to meet Cassian's.

"Why am I back? Why should I tell you? It is more fun for you to find out too late."

Cassian Abrantes

 

[Cassian Abrantes]

Thessaly Veruna ​

Cassian did not recoil when she pressed against him. He stood as stone, unmoving, the weight of her trembling pressed to his chest like a confession against a wall. The words poured out of her, knives wrapped in silk, rage and memory braided together until even she could not tell if she wanted to wound him or be heard. He listened, because that was what he did. Because silence, sometimes, was sharper than any reply.

When she finally broke away, when her body quivered against the bar and the veneer cracked to reveal something raw and human beneath, Cassian exhaled through his nose. Slow. Heavy.

"Thessaly..."

"You always wanted to be seen. Even now." His voice was quieter than before, the iron in it softened by understanding not forgiveness, but recognition. "You clawed your way through hell, and now you want me to look at the ashes and call it freedom."

He stepped closer, not to loom, but so that she would have to face the steel of his words without escape.

"You begged me once. And I told you the truth, I would not steal you from chains only to forge new ones. You thought it was honor that stayed my hand. It wasn't. It was love, the kind that refused to turn you into a secret, into a rebellion scrawled in shadows. I wanted better for you than being mine in secret. You deserved at one time to be free in the open."

His jaw tightened, his voice roughening, though he never raised it. "But freedom has a price. And you… you've spent yours on vengeance. On games. On pretending that being feared is the same as being whole."

He let the silence return, the hiss of artificial water filling the hall once more. The soldiers, the contractors, the entire gleaming edifice seemed to fade around them, leaving only the wreckage of words between.

Cassian's eyes narrowed, not cruel, not gloating, but with the grim promise of a man who had dedicated his life to truth, no matter how ugly. But as he took a step back, the look in his eyes changed to daggers as they pierced her eyes.

"I will find out why you are here, while you are here. You are not fit, in the slightest to speak my sisters name. You could live a dozen lifetimes and still never measure up to her."

"Milady..." Cassian bowed his head as he turned to walk away.

 

[Thessaly Veruna]

Dumbfounded. Thessaly was dumbfounded. Slack-jawed, she watched Cassian begin to turn away. In the moment that he spoke, she had a dawning of revelation.

"You...are..."

She rubbed the bridge of nose, and the tension seemed to fade away. Her entire life was put in great context. She had thought she could have been happy, or at least some sort of happy with Cassian. But now she understood, she would have been miserable with him too. And possibly never free of him.

"...an absolute...moron."

Her hands covered her face, and she laughed. It was a laugh of relief. Of finally being free even of her past and the 'would-of, could-of' of her dreams throughout her ill-fated marriage.

She felt lighter. But she did not feel less scornful.

Her heels clicked against the marble floor as she stepped forward and grabbed his sleeve.

"You knew what my fate would be. You even admit to it now. You knew I would be sold off like chattel. And your love thought it best that I be given that chance," she said, her eyes glistened just a little as she recalled all the days that she wished she could have been Cassian's wife instead. What a fool she had been.

"Your love is the most foul. Decrepit. Pointless gesture ever. Your love doomed me to a life of abuse and anguish. Your love hardened me to the point that I can look at you now and say without flinching..."

Her eyes narrowed.

"...that before I am done...House Abrantes will be in ruins. And you know what you have to thank for that...your useless...pathetic excuse...for love."

Cassian Abrantes

 

[Cassian Abrantes]

Thessaly Veruna ​

Cassian froze. The sound of her heels striking marble came sharp and certain, the sound of someone who had rediscovered her footing, and meant to use it to wound. Her hand seized his sleeve, and for the first time that evening, she pulled him back rather than he choosing to stay. The force of her anger was almost physical, it radiated through the fine fabric between them, through the tremor in her fingers, through the venom laced into every syllable.

Her words struck like blasterfire. You knew. And in the terrible quiet that followed, Cassian realized she was right, at least in part. He had known what her father intended. Not the details, not the depths of what she endured, but enough to fear what becoming her rescuer might cost them both. He had chosen duty, honor, the order of things. The safer cruelty.

For a heartbeat, something flickered across his face not guilt, but the weary understanding of a man seeing the full consequence of a single, long-ago decision. He turned his gaze down to where her fingers gripped his sleeve. This was the fury of someone who had carried pain for too long, only to find the source standing alive before her, still preaching virtue. But she was not the only one with fury, Cassian had never shown his yet.

"You think it was love that doomed you?" he asked quietly, his tone stripped of all the sharpness from before. "No, Thessaly. It was the world your father built, the one men like me thought we could mend by following the rules." His eyes lifted, meeting hers. "I believed in mercy, restraint, honor, code, loyalty." A breath, slow and deliberate. "I was wrong, but not in loving you."

Cassian did not pull away.

"Perhaps my love is foul..." he continued, his voice steady now, a soldier's cadence threading through the quiet. "Because it still pities what was done to you. Because it still sees a woman worth saving beneath all this rage. You think that makes me weak?" He leaned in, just enough for the reflection of her glittering gown to blur in his eyes. "It makes me dangerous."

The last of her threats, the promise of House Abrantes' ruin, landed between them like a gauntlet thrown. Cassian's jaw clenched, but his voice remained calm.

"If destroying me gives you peace," he said, "Then take it. I've faced worse fates than honesty. But do not lie to yourself, Thessaly. You don't want to ruin me. You want me to feel it. You want me to see the woman the galaxy made of you, and regret that I let it happen."

A pause. Then, softer: "You've made certain I will."

He stepped back, her hand slipping from his sleeve, the fine fabric sliding from her grasp. The light caught him from the side now, outlining the edges of a man who had survived too many moral victories that tasted like ash.

"Do what you must," Cassian said, voice low, final. "If this is your freedom, then claim it. But know this, I'll rebuild every ruin you make of me, and I'll do it willingly, while still hating you for it."

With that, he turned once more toward the exit, not fleeing, but leaving as if closing a door long overdue.

Thread Exit​