Gunns

[Seydon of Arda]

The mindscape recoiled. The fleshy purchase under Seydon’s boots undulated like a struck membrane; outcroppings and jags of blood-beating flesh hove into view. Psionic coherence was trembling under Rosa’s assault; he could see the horizon terminator shimmering with wordless colours, the hints of Ordo’s real dreams, the sky gradually sweeping the ink-shot overcast away. Shev Rayner’s messy phantom choked and fell to pieces, before Seydon had to even cut the apparition back. He saw Ordo now, clearly; wiping off ectosplasmic entrails from his proud Mandalorian casement.

His wife didn’t feel as ‘present’. Seydon turned about, trying to regard her own self-image. She was away again, in the unreal wind and dancing up nonexistent bridges of light. Fighting in her own way, he knew, now chasing the link to its abominable source. Likewise, Odium was ‘there’, as a faint cold on his skin. In the death stink clinging to the slowly draining ‘fleshlands’ surrounding. Again, the Dunaan felt a bite of ‘uselessness.’ It was all so much phantasmagoria and Dunaan had little business operating on that kind of plane.

But Rosa vibrated through their bond. Seydon paused; remembered her patient lessons, the teasing against his increasing frustration, about seeing the water just past his stony brain. Jaw clenched, he shut his eyes and threaded back to her through their link. She felt like what infinity ought to feel as: everywhere, nowhere, present and invisible, a governing law that acted so subtly, you wouldn’t know it if you weren’t schooled to the evidence. I wonder how easily she plies me with those wiles, Seydon thought. At the end of ‘infinity’, was wherever Ordo’s shadow had holed up. He didn’t interfere with Rosa’s assault, he had neither the knowledge or practice. The ferocity of her ire, a corona of sun-fire with a pit of chilliest ice, was lancing in for the kill. Seydon trembled at it, fought to exercise her tutelage, then…! …Then he was briefly everywhere and nowhere. Easily subsuming into Rosa’s light, adding to her arsenal his own rage.

Lola looked up. Seydon’s brow was creased, sweat falling off his face, blooding showing in his mouth. The Dunaan smiled; imagining Odium and Isolda and all those cretins bursting as his grip fastened around their necks.

[member="Rosa Gunn"] | [member="Ordo"]

 

[Ordo]

[member="Seydon Gunn"] [member="Rosa Gunn"]


Ordo kept up his assault as that of the Sith grew more fervent. His hand were a blur of movement as he fought and grasped for control. His grey-green eyes, old and tired though they were, flashed with the thrill of the battle. The subtle nuances of the combat that felt so real and they way the battle ebbed and flowed through his very being as he battled the Sith Lord’s manifestations. No, man prays for peace more than he who’s life is war, they say, but at the same time nothing made one feel more alive than a the sickly caress of imminent death.

He felt the others unleash hell in response to the Sith’s attack and with that hell, Ordo did the one thing he thought would that would help ensure that this would be the Sith’s last assault. The battle slowed to a crawl in his mind as he felt for the instigator of his pains. He who had helped shape the travesty that had lead him to the Gunns in the first place. Ordo put his hands at the side of his head and strained in the force. He drew, he pulled, he coerced and begged every drop of energy from the tool that the Manda had seen fit for him to carry and directed it into a single concentrated effort. His attack lunged for the Sith and gripped his essence. As Rosa attacked Odium’s mind and Seedon held the Sith in a ever crushing grip that would no doubt be the Sith’s death, Ordo held the creature in place, inert, helpless.

The apparitions faded as the shock surged from the Sith in a wave that was almost enough to break Ordo’s concentration. The Sith retaliated in the only way left to him under the three pronged counter attack. He began trying to play on their weaknesses. He began with Rosa.

“This will change nothing Layil. He will never love you again now.” Odium sent to her mind, “He settles for you he holds on like a child clinging to a comfort blanket long after its torn and ragged, just like his love for you. You’re just a convenience for him a pretty little thing he’ll keep out of a misguided desire for constancy. He’ll keep you, oh yes. Keep you, bed you, hold you but not love you. Never that. At least with me you would have been free of the lie that is love.”

To Seydon he turned desperate for respite and used the same tactic.

“Seydon of Arda,” Odium began his voice like a rasp across durasteel, “Let him die Seydon, this man who bedded your wife, give him to me now and you will never see me again. Think of it? His heavy frame pressing her down as she clawed for freedom and yet you defend him from his just deserts. Kill him Seydon, or let me do it. I need only a moment a brief respite to give him the sweet death we all desire for him. You’ll not taint your hands? Oh, but let me and you’re free of us both forever.”

He turned to Ordo’s mind and stabbed forward with increasing effort but could not get in, he tried and clawed at the Mandalorian to employ his Dun Moch but to no avail as vines of mental energy began winding up his form in the mental shadow mire. The vines sprouted thorns that dug into Odium’s body and began to constrict. The creature had played his last hand and would play his games no longer.

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa snarled, driving hot knives through his mind, feeling Seydon's fury close and drawing on it, she'd close the world in on Odium make him feel contained and constricted, closing the walls of his own mind about him and she ripped it apart. His words only serving to give fire to her own rage. He had orchestrated all of this, he had played with Ordo and set him free knowing that one day he would track Layil down.

Layil is dead. Dead like you soon will be you wretched whore-son. You've no power over me any more, your words are wasted.

She felt him turn his dun moch to Seydon, and she reached for her husband, reassuring, pleading and hoping he would hold fast. Ordo's vines set to tear him apart. She felt Odium's pain, felt it like it was her own as he slipped from life a scream burst from her lips. Darkness engulfed her, wrenched her from their minds as she pitched backwards, hitting the floor of the medical centre hard.

[member="Ordo"] [member="Seydon Gunn"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

You don’t get to say her name.

Odium’s final cry was a ripping cadence in the void, motes of contorted, howling sound scattering like pearls. For the barest instant, they were granted a sight of the Sith Lord’s naked essence: a knotty, tendrilled bundle of painful energies just barely yoked together by an exhausted, repellant will. Then Ordo’s grief and spite, Rosa’s afflicting rage, cannoned into his spirit. The phantom briefly webbed with imagined fractures tearing through his soul with coruscating light. Seydon felt Odium die; a hard-vacuum implosion, then nothingness. The mindscape gave up coherence. An ill-coloured fissure opened under his toes, tipping him forward into gouging brightness.

He snapped back to consciousness. The reality of the medical chamber slowly resolved itself with increasing detail; the sterile tiling in slate, cedar lathe walls, soft glow lamps that seemed detached from the ceiling, banks of diagnostic and support consoles, a deactivated assistant droid standing under an anti-bacterial gown, Ordo strapped to the long gurney. …And Dr. Lola on hands and knees, cradling Rosa gently in her hands.

“Rose…” Seydon croaked, kneeling low.

“She came to, then just… fell,” Lola said, nervousness showing in her drawn face and hands. He edged closer, looking down into Rosa’s mute expression. “Airway, breathing, circulation is all nominal. There’s some distressed epidermal bleeding around the eyes and mouth but nothing indicative of anything else. She’s only unconscious.”

“Get her into a suite of her own,” He ordered. “Full diagnostic and biopsy. Need to know if that fiend still managed some pox in… Just look after her, Lola, please?”

“Sir,” She nodded, already in the midst of summoning shift orderlies and on-hand nurse aids.

As Rosa was gently bundled onto a reclined stretcher, wheeled into the hallway, Seydon was left to face Ordo’s unsettling serenity. The giant had finally stilled on his gurney. Splotches of broken colours showed on his face and traced lines down his throat. The strap restraints and chrome buckles were nearly torn through, compromised.

“Maybe when you wake…” Seydon frowned. “We’ll have a few words. Just us…”

[member="Rosa Gunn"] | [member="Ordo"]

 

[Ordo]

[member="Rosa Gunn"] [member="Seydon Gunn"]

He lay there quietly for a time as his mind slowly groped for consciousness. His body felt heavy, his mind clouded and tired. He tried to move but could barely move more than his fingers. His eyes fluttered open and he let his head loll to one side as he fought to focus his blurry eyes.

He remembered Odium's scream first and then slowly the pain that had made him pray for life. He had come looking for judgement and even in that he had begged for a little longer to live anyway. Cowardice...it seemed he had become too weak even for honor in his old age. Or perhaps he had just finally been broken.

He rolled his head to the otherside and looked at the stranger in doctor's clothes standing by the monitor on his left. He tried to move a hand in her direction but found he could barely lift it. His body would not answer him now. Maybe he was dead already and just too dumb or stubborn to know it.

"Water." He tried to say but nothing came out but a whisper of a croak. The doctor noticed the soft noise however and moved to take his wrist between her fingers.

"Save your strength, sir." She said as she placed a device onto his chest. "You're in the hospital. You need to rest."

The woman whispered to a nurse and the other woman left and returned a few moments later with ice water and a straw.

"How bad?" He asked weakly after a sip. His eyes closed again as he felt to weak to keep them open for any longer.

"Not good." She replied calmly with a hint of sadness. It didn't feel good either.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Later, a gesture unseen from the medical gurney summoned Doctor Lola from Ordo’s hospital chambers. Outside, a brief argument stirred until a coarse grunt finalized the discussion. The door hissed open on its servo-motors, Seydon standing paused under the frame and jamb, pooled with edges of glowlamp light and shade. After a beat, he stepped in, locking the door with an overriding thumb-print. The Dunaan tracked to Ordo’s bedside, staring down at his sweating face. The mortal killing sword, Razorlight, hung in his hand.

“…When you’ve your strength back, you’re free to go,” He said. Words toneless with curt, steely inflection. “Until then, you can eat and rest under our roof. You won’t be bothered with the exception of medical staff, myself, or Rosa. You’re ship will be refueled and stocked for travel.”

His jaw flexed, strange motes playing in his cats-eyes. He took out a roll of flimsiplast and holo-recorder, laid them atop Ordo’s stomach. “…My wife wants peace. She would never forgive me if I laid hands on you. Not something I could live with. And it leaves me with not a lot of option. So, I’m going to explain a few things and you’ll listen. Your coming here has shamed us both. I’m forbidden from avenging the insults and damages done against Rosa because she’s argued for your clemency. But there will be a wereguild. In exchange for your life, I’m extracting an oath.

“You will swear to it. On your honour, Jasper Ordo Ar’klim of Corellia, on the honour of your name, on the honour of your station as Alor. On the honour of your kin, blood and otherwise. On the honour of your clan, the whole of Ordo, of their kin and heirs, of their ancestors living and dead, to all generations that have come and will be. Recognizing that this oath is a promise unbreakable, and shall be honoured in your authority whether living or dead. Swearing that if you break from your word, or your successor fails in their duty to uphold, that Clan Ordo forfeits the worth of their lives and will be hunted and slain until their memory is wiped from the stars. That if Clan Ordo refuses me, I’ll take heads.

“…Ten fighters. Your best warriors. To serve and protect my wife. To become an extension of her will, her eyes and ears, to swear their lives in service to her until death or she releases them. They’ll forsake all prior bonds and answer to Rosa Gunn alone. Her shadows. Her vengeance. That is what I’ll take from you. …And if any of them abandon their duty or betray my wife, I will put them to death.”

Seydon gestured to the flimsiplast and recorder. “You’re going to put it in your own writing and voice. So, when the time comes, it’ll be an insurance. Now, get to it.”

[member="Ordo"] | [member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Ordo]

[member="Seydon Gunn"] [member="Rosa Gunn"]

The big man looked at the hunter with heavy lidded eyes and thought. Yes, he could see where this could begin to pay a debt that would have deserved a life. It wasn't payment, there could never be true amends made, this was no ransom for sins, but he could see it as a gesture of peace.

He lifted a hand slowly and took the flimsiplast and recorder that was offered. He pulled it up on his chest and took a moment to compose the words in his sluggish mind.

"I, Jasper Ordo be Ar'klim, be Manda'yaim, be Corellia, former Alor and Field Marshal of the Mando'ade pledge no less than ten members of my clan to the Service of Rosa Gunn and her children, be they natural or adopted. They will come when called and ask for no more than rights to buy or hunt food while in her service and will take shelter where they are told. This service will last no less than 100 standard years or until they are discharged from they're duties."

He paused from sudden guilt knowing he would not be able to do the duty required with his own life. That was not his way, but it was right.

"Should any fail to obey the call and not answer, they are Dar'manda and their lives are forfeit. They will have no after life and they will be hunted by their brothers and any the Gunn family choose until death after which they will be have no hope of marching into the Manda to join their Vode. I pledge this and also declare myself dar'manda if it is not honored.

Signed,

Jasper Ordo be Ar'klim
Okyaab VI Overseer"

Ordo pushed his head back on his pillow and closed his eyes. He pushed the document toward Seydon and hoped for peace to come one day.

"Let it be done as you say." He said with some strength back into his gravelly voice.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

The holo-recorder rattled off and depowered in Seydon’s palm. He took the flimsiplast, the ink-pen, pausing to see if ink drops stained the gurney bedding. Foe or not, there was something to be said about easy dignity. No invalid liked to lay in offal. He looked over the medicial consoles hooked into Ordo’s flesh, half-guessing that whatever wasn’t winking, red, or screaming alarms was telling that the Mandalorian was, for now, in stable condition. Seydon quelled some last, treacherous thoughts, and left Ordo to his sleep. And guilt. The glowlamps dimmed out behind his stride.

Dr. Lola waited still in the hallway outside, datapad still clutched up to her throat. “I-I trust you didn’t beleaguer him?” She asked, as she regained some volume.

“Just left him to sleep. He’s all yours, ma’am,” Seydon said.

He left to go down the hall and steered west at a junction, seeking out Rosa’s chambers. The document and recorder felt like an ingot of fire inside his jacket pocket. Time the Mandalorians were good for something, other than shouting, sulking, and killing one another over insults they provoked anyway out of cultural ennui, he thought. It secured his wife the sort of teeth the Foundation required. Rosa Gunn was formidable; a cutting, razor wit, hardboiled will, and a sense for negotiation. He suspected some major political forces doubted her mettle still. Did not take the blooming refugee crisis seriously or at the very least, were content to shoulder her with the burden and turn up their nostrils at the slightest inference of cooperative aid.

Rosa couldn’t afford to brook controversy. At least not vocally. But the sight of Mandalorian keepers at her side, trained, dedicated, and honour bound? Dunaan would be better, Seydon knew, but where and how would he convince a cadre to enlist as permanent retainers? The Dark Wolf School is down to a handful, the Bloodbat School is aloof and more dedicated to assassination than monster hunting, the Gryphon’s are inscrutable, and the D’oemir. The D’oemir are headstrong, obstinate. Never ones to take orders well. The Manticore were all but extinct. As for the fabled School of the Unicorn… Dead since Old Priad, Seyda’s final apprentice. The man and force that reorganized the Dunaan into their current shape that had endured for the past forty-thousand years.

The bucketheads would have to do, he thought. Question is, he paused before Rosa’s medical cell, will I survive? Seydon knocked twice with a brief rhythm and slid inside. His wife rested posed in a long, tilted bed, propped with heavy duvets and a castle of pillows. Her husband’s request more than hers. The Dunaan crept to her side, taking hold of a sleeping hand. Exhaustion painted her features with a very rare expression. He caught himself searching the shape of her mouth; would she wake out of a dream with the right kiss? From the right one? Seydon rubbed his thumb callous over her knuckles. The agreement between him and Ordo would remain secret. Already, it was starting to kill him.

[member="Rosa Gunn"] | [member="Ordo"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa's dreams were full of shadows, flitting images of her own sins coupled with scions of darkness brought on by the mindscape they'd fought in. Odium's dying scream carried on the wind as she trudged through it all, trying once more to push it back behind the iron gates, but the more she pushed, the more it seemed to slip away and around her. An unstoppable flood of darkness that she could not put the stopped back on. Odium had caused all of this, picked his prey well, knowing what had occured between her and Ordo, he'd understood that the mandalorian would not have been able to continue through life without confronting the one thing he could not fix.

He knew Rosa too, both as herself and as Layil, he'd known that such a visit would trigger the darkness once more in the Jedi that fought so hard for redemption. It may have backfired on him, but his end was not the end. He may have died, but Rosa lived, and she did so with an inability to shut it all out. There was no true form to her nightmare, only shadow and emotion.

She felt Seydon's presence, long before she felt his touch, focusing on it and him to haul herself out of a pool of misery. Eyes fluttered open, heading rolling slightly towards him. She squeezed his hand, indigo eyes boring into the amber ones that watched over her with such love and care. The force might have punished her in many ways, but it had brought Rosa her dunaan and for that she would eternally grateful.

"Ordo?" she croaked, the single word a question of their unwanted guests well being. Let him be alive, let me have succeeded without damaging him further.

[member="Seydon Gunn"] [member="Ordo"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

[SIZE=10pt]“Resting,” Seydon assured. He leaned and stood from his seat, retrieving a steel basin and a gnarled sponge from her bedside cabinet. A nurse or orderly would see to certain hygienic protocols but he would see to that task, its certain privilege, himself. He doused a thick dollop of bubbly soap cream into the bowl, pouring in hot water from a chamber tap provided beside a locked, heavyset supply and medicinal cabinet.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]“He’s just catching his sleep now,” He went on. Rosa’s sterile gown was adjusted, pulled to give her throat and collarbone some room to breathe the lukewarm air. Seydon prodded the sponge into the basin, soaking up the almost too-hot washing mixture. He then began dabbing carefully at her brow, down her cheeks, pressing before rinsing and drying with a slightly rough cloth. Refrained from mentioning Ordo’s condition. How he looked like hell and death warmed over in his cot. That he might not be long for the galaxy, because Seydon had seen the same expression of surrender in too many men and women waiting, ready, to die. He said nothing, gently caressing Rosa’s nape with the sponge, catching any rivulets with his ready palm. Couldn’t have her backside soaked and growing clammy against the narrow mattress.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt]In time, replacing the basin with more suds, he sat his wife upright (much as he dared), and shampooed her hair. Seydon believed in her dignity. Others could look frail, look mortal, and maybe they were allowed to be as much when the pain of responsibility grew heavy. For his part, he would give her comfort. Attention. He wrestled with the idea of ‘coddling’; ultimately, Rosa needed nothing like the attentions he doted on her. Others could and would argue that he brewed bad habits, encouraged spiritual weakness. Perhaps, he thought, but what sexless ascetic could possibly understand what it was like simply washing your lover’s hair? Soon, he was toweling through her raven locks. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt][member="Rosa Gunn"] | [member="Ordo"][/SIZE]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa's amethyst eyes followed his movements as he collected the basin, eyes never leaving his face as he washed her with a tenderness that many would have thought beyond the Dunaan. He was a hunter, his body bore the scars to prove the hardships he'd ensured. His touch should have been rough, but he had always been gentle at his core. Her heart swelled and she found herself falling in love with him all over again.

She raised a hand, finding his and tugging him gently back to where she could see him. Let her hair be damp, it didn't matter, she'd only endure bed rest for a couple more hours at best. There was work to be done, there was always work to be done. First she needed to pry, she needed to know what was hiding behind those amber eyes of his.

"What did you do?" she asked softly.

[member="Seydon Gunn"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“Nothing,” Seydon said, toeing the murky washbasin under the cot with his boot.

So far as he didn’t attempt to collect on the agreed debt, it would be nothing. There were no single guarantees Ordo’s kin would honour this will. If Mandalorian honour was as fickle and tin-foil brittle as Seydon believed, they could very well take out a bounty on their heads. His own, at least. Or send their warriors to deal with the besmirch on their good name, until the piling dead slain at his hands forced a parlay. To say nothing of the potential trouble if the Death Watch took exception to hearing word there were good Mando’ade fighters at the beck and call of aruetiise. Seydon felt a sneer in his throat; no love lost between Dunaan and Mandalorian. They’d firepower, cannons to call from orbit, warriors falling through fire on the backs of steel droids, singing time-hallowed songs. He had his swords and skill. In the end, that’d be their epitaph.

“It’s nothing,” He said again and shook his head. “Just squared with Ordo on where we stood is all. Not the kindest things I’ve said… But it’s done.”

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

 

[Rosa Gunn]

Rosa pursed her lips, searching his face reading him like the book he was to her. You're lying, she thought, you're hiding something from me because you're afraid of how I will react. She blew a sigh out of her nose and dropped her gaze. She was hardly in a position to argue this point, not after all she'd kept hidden from him. But was that the same? He'd never asked her outright what had happened, so she'd never lied...

Her expression hardened and she looked up again. "I don't want to argue with you, I haven't got the energy but that doesn't mean I won't challenge that statement later. So make sure you're ready to justify that lie, [member="Seydon Gunn"]."

She laid back against the pillows watching his face.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

And she’d extract from him exactly what she wished, whether kindly or otherwise. Such was her insistence. Already the lie felt sour and rotten in his belly. Seydon pursed his mouth, face stony, nodding off to some distant thought and mumbling to excuse himself. The door closed to her rooms and he slid off his heels onto his rump, holding his face in a hand.

I don’t lie, I thought. I don’t lie. But if I’d done it as you wished, there’d be no peace, Rose. Though maybe now there won’t be peace anyhow, Seydon considered. You’ll rail and ask ‘What am I to do with a bodyguard?’ All I’ll say will be ‘Whatever you wish.’ He thought of the warmth of her belly in the long Tethan winters. About her easy laughter and quiet relief, always unspoken, that came with his attempts to distract her from work.

Should he have given Ordo a last send-off and let the matter lie? No, his jaw tightened. He would not sit and allow indignities to haunt them. They were not victims, not anymore, and Ordo’s innocence in her violation didn’t withstand the need for redress. My love, you are owed, he thought, why can you not see that? Why do you refuse it?? Seydon felt his understanding slipping into fouler and fouler things. Mood black, hating that the lie had begun extending into himself, the Dunaan rose and stalked off.

“Feth!” He swung, crumbling a solid granite block mounted in the corridor jamb. No pain, save for a slight throb at the side of his fist. Seydon strode through the clastic litter, out to the temple foyer and into blinding mid-day light.

[member="Rosa Gunn"]

~End~​