Out of sight, Seydon took the rattling iron lift cage down to the lower garages. The chatter of clanging metal on stone reflected something as tumultuous in his eyes, barren now, flinty with brittle hurt. Once arrived, he disconnected a small ground-car from a refueling pump, taking it out through a small back forecourt. Old country roads still showed through centuries of root infestation and dragging grass; he drove up a twist through and under gnarled Tethan canopy, branches peeled and barked off the car, cats eyes peering on through violet gloom and shafts of hard light. He wanted distance. There was a spot he knew just ten kilometres out from the Temple grounds, and hidden behind an elegant rise of country knolls. Seydon floored the throttle, taking sprawling turns, drifting the aft end out and sliding through each mean turn, counter-steering hard.
The car arrived on a lower hillside at the edge of brief part in the forest. The treeline rose halfway down the northward slope, like a half-shaven hair pate. Seydon geared down, stopped and threw the parking-brake. Here was where he would settle Jagdhund & Jaeger. He stepped out from the driver’s cabin and slowly approached, then sat on a bald jut of rock spar. Cold leeched up his legs. The rainy season would not be kind, he knew. Seydon gazed over the broad, gentle hilltop; landscaping would be needed to settle out some level earth and screen against moisture eating up through the floor joists. He wanted to imagine the Workshop completed.
The stone brick construction and neo-gothic architecture, done in the old traditions so favoured by the Dunaan Schools. Only a single floor but steepled tall, purposefully imposing. Materials were already ordered: grey basalt bricks and gunmetal granite blocks, Kashyyyk clay shingling done to specific order, joist and support and ceiling beams of wroshyr fir, boards for the flooring, fire-bricks for the hearth and chimney, with brass, copper, steel, and glass. He’d even written privately to Commander Boudica of Hythe Park, asking if her recovering citizenry had any furnishings that were damaged. Promised to pay out a full purse. All of it was due for delivery in six to eight weeks, giving him little under and over two months to make the ground prepared.
...Perhaps mark out a discrete grave to throw Ordo and the rest of his flea-bitten people into. Seydon knew Jagdhund & Jaeger, the knoll, the Workshop, were energies trying to exhaust his rage. It was an effort not to grind and blunt his teeth. The anger was hot enough in his belly, made him sick. He warded off an urge to vomit, controlled through breathing exercises, wanting to instill a calm that refused to come. Seydon smacked his fist off the rock spar, shattering away a heavy shard.
She couldn’t have told him. The truth would have destroyed her and them together. Rosa was right in defending Ordo’s own victimization. It didn’t soften the sting of realizing his wife’s hidden violation. That the Sith had weaponized sexual assault. That the blackness would have swallowed him up if she told him, after he set out to punish and ruin every acolyte and lord subscribing to that hated ideology. That all of it left him as a helpless husband wrestling under anguish that couldn’t be easily cured.
It felt guilty to be enraged. He was not the one imprisoned for half a decade. Forced to witness one atrocity after another. Where did the anger come from? Because he understood what rape was, what it did, how it damaged and ruined and demeaned? How it was a tool of the most despotic, incurably wretched enemies of all things good? For now he knew how it wounded everyone and everything it could touch? Yes, he thought, I know what it is. I hate it. I hate everything it is and what it stands for. That Rosa was subjected to that kind of attack... I want to pay everything back in blood, because god-damnit, that’s exactly what she’s owed. A river of slain enemies drowning in their own shid and blood and fear. There’s something mad in me and it wants to kill so very badly. I want to kill too.
...The One Sith were gone. That iteration at least. All its inner cults smashed and deposed. Whatever parties further responsible for Layil’s supplanting of his wife were either dead or wisely in deep exile. Vengeance was useless now, and that stung too. Seydon looked up; a mist was unfurling through the highlands. Low clouds were creeping over his knoll, enshrouding him and the car in a milk film. The Dunaan sat alone in the wandering fog. Thoughts turned Rosa and himself over and over. What was he really worth to her? How strong were either of them, if that had been kept secret. Damn it, you know why. She had already defeated the memory. Her scars were healed over and there was nothing left for it. And you understood better than to ask, because you both had already so much to look forward to. Your work in the Temple, and now the workshop. That you’re home for once and she gets to enjoy that. Cooking, cleaning, training, working, all within arms reach. She has never had that and you were loathe to ruin any of it. Your wife was content to love and be loved as fiercely.
She let go, why can’t you?
“Because she’s my wife!” Seydon cried out to the fog.
God-damn Mandalorian arrogance, their enfeebled, twisted senses of convenient morality. God-damn the Sith and their own blind stupidity and endless hunger. God-damn them all for making his life hell twice over, without a way to pay them back in kind. More than anyone, Seydon thought, god-damn me. For not being there when she needed me most. And being an impotent fool that took so long to catch up. Subjecting her to too much terror and waiting, wasting years that could have been spent making a family while they still had the chance. Very few Dunaan had married, with good reason. In their studies, old Ajax had quietly but firmly discouraged the notion. With his taken name, the formidable elder said, he should grant his love a proper divorce and depart. Their love would suffer horrendously otherwise. Such was their karma.
He couldn’t. The wroth that swelled through him when Rosa forbade him raise a hand against her one time tormentor spirited thoughts that brought another well of shame. When the tears finally broke, they nettled and ran hot. That black part of Chaos, as Dunaan called it, the Force by everyone else, tempted him with freedom to act if he just broke with convention. Rosa had broken his heart. He ought to go out, break others in return. Seydon savaged it away with supreme, heartfelt contempt. Never; he had mastered that mark of Chaos, yoked to its will, using it sparingly and always on his own terms. To relent to it now would only raise another mark of shame against Rosa, besides his behaviour.
What would he say, when the time came? He was sorry but still enraged, how dare she stand like that in his way and thank gods she did. ...What did she want to do now? Slowly, he let the great vastness of Teth’s revealing landscape fill his senses. Soulful emptiness briefly numbed him to hurt. All that was left now was this vista... And the inevitable. Seydon hoped he’d be composed enough to see Rosa again. If something broke when she looked him in the eye, he wanted to have strength to keep on his feet. The Dunaan felt the sickness in his bowels turn to hunger. The chill, unnoticed, had ached into his muscles. He sat on the rock, instilled its solidity into himself. Watching over the forest canopy, when company would soon arrive.
[member="Rosa Gunn"] | [member="Ordo"]
