Private It’s A Hard Knock Life

[Capris Halcyon]

Step by Step

Capris didn't put much stock in positive affirmations. Her brain was much too slimy and uncooperative for them to not just slide off the dome. She was like an eel in that way—stubbornly writhing from anything conducive to a healthy environment.

And yet there was a weird, inexplicable amount of comfort to be found in those particular three words.

She could hazard a guess as to why.

Capris sighed, letting her body fall limp against the outer shell of her ship. There was nothing on the horizon but stars and inky blackness. Well, nothing but one crucial exception.

Kyric.

He was out there– promising a dawn to her solitude. Hope was always fickle with her. Weakly pulsing and tauntingly delicate like if she spent any real time examining it the seams would soften and rip. But that didn't change the fact that it did exist.

It existed because of him.

Sappy and a bit a pitiful sure, but true to form.

She pulled her knees up to her chest, used her one arm to keep them in a lock and then rested her head atop. Staring, and yearning, and chastising herself on an endless loop.

Her eyes fluttered shut on their own accord after a while, tired of her vain attempt to ward off sleep. Why would she anyway? It was her only opportunity to see him.

——————

When she opened her eyes again, prompted by a distinct smell of herb, Capris buffered.

Her shitty posture righted itself as soon as she realized where she was seated. A top a gutter, gurgling with something that was definitely not rain water.

Where the hell..?

The girl blinked, rising to her full height in slow, cautious movement.

A thick peppering of grime and soot wrapped the cityscape before her in a situationally appropriate biker jacket. Giving the appearance of tough, stained leather punched through with gunmetal. Capris felt suddenly grateful to look the part. Tatted up. Scarred. Dressed in a beige tank and scuffed jacket. Entirely and completely uninspired against the given backdrop.

Was this…Denon?

Surprisingly, for someone in her chosen vocation, she'd never been. The name just slotted itself in her brain like it'd been lying dormant. Tendrils of thought grasped it, turned it over, tried to spy her reflection on its surface.

Everything pressed in with such damming familiarity she almost felt dumb for not getting it.

Her eyes thinned as stepped over a dead body, bloated but gaunt with a vice-like grip on a bottle.

The half-gloom, jaggedly cut ever so often by flickering neon, did well in hiding some of the more unseemly alleyways. But the Force was a reliable snitch. There were enough wounded souls and acidic need to go around. It came packaged differently, but the desperation was the same as what she'd felt on Saraveen.

Bent spines huddled by trash fires, spice traded hands, and although she kept her eyes piously averted– a tall scantily clad woman rested her hip on a street lamp.

She whistled something low and seductive that had Capris's cheeks flare a shade deeper.

That got her up and moving.

Any number of criminal dealings could've brought her here. It was easy to surrender to the idea. The sudden amnesia brought on by one of the many blows to the head she'd sustained for her penchant of using her face to block.

But then she felt it again, and suddenly none of that speculation mattered.

It was like sipping wine, warmth spreading limb from limb. She remembered this feeling, as fresh and exhilarating as when she first felt it. Her head whipped around, gaze gently landing on a building.

One that admittedly looked like it shouldn't be standing.

Something told her to go in.

Kyric

 

[Kyric]

Smoke was the first scent Kyric remembered from his childhood.

Everyone in Kaazek's employ had a preference when it came to their vice of choice. Some leaned into cigara. It wasn't nearly as catastrophic to the body given long term use. Others rolled their spice with gimer bush joints; the psychedelic effects supposedly tripled when taken alongside the benign genesian plant.

Worst of all were the death sticks.

When poured over spice and burned like any other cheap drug, it colored the room in shades of pink and purple that smelled like children's candy. A perfect trapping for a naïve youth who knew no better.

But Kyric knew better.

From the very first memory that survived the earliest stages of infantile amnesia, he watched as the lost and damned of Denon's Suicide Slums dove headlong into a slow, miserable end. He recalled watching Kaazek shove every drug under the sun onto his mother until even her name slipped into the ravaged cracks of a life no longer her own.

Even though Kyric could so easily picture the verdant glimmer of her eyes, and long cascading white tresses that coiled around her like a raging waterfall, another image of his mother dominated his memory in its place; a broken, deranged woman with cracked and yellow teeth. Her gums were the color of tar. The pure snow white locks that once hid him from the world had grayed prematurely.

His mother transformed into a poor imitation of the light that once guided his life.

Her face came to him in his nightmares. It appeared every time someone offered him a smoke or a drink. She trembled in his mind's eye, muttering incoherently to herself as she scratched deep, bloody grooves into her flesh between trips.

Death should've claimed her long before it did.

Kyric blamed his cowardice for not freeing her from the nightmare that dominated her life from the moment she stumbled into the Hidden Delight.

And now Kyric stood within what would later become his bedroom on the second floor of the bar all over again, staring down at his mother's corpse like the very first day he lost her.

"Hey, mama," Kyric whispered softly. He dropped to a knee and gently brushed her patchy, matted, and gray hair aside. "I met dad before he died. He was like a supernova, I tell you what. So vibrant and bright, just like you promised." Her body felt lighter than it did in his youth as he lifted her from the filth-strewn floor and carried her over to the stained mattress in the corner.

"Kyla's doin' great, too. I wish you could see her now, all grown up and takin' the galaxy by storm. She looks just like you."

For reasons unknown, Kyric sat beside her on the bed and gently worked the knots from her hair with deft fingers. He couldn't bring himself to stare at the horrific bruises around her neck left by whichever degenerate strangled her that night. His gaze was affixed to a distant point outside the vile den, where the kiffar suspected the source of this terrible nightmare awaited him.

---

Tags: Capris Halcyon

 

[Capris Halcyon]

Her feet took her forward, yielding to the bend in the Force like sand to water. There was no fight in her. No hesitance or caution for show. Not while understanding dawned in slow, painful reverb throughout her body. What was she about to find in here that was so tightly strung to his soul? What was Kyric of all people doing in a place like this?

She took the strange, gutting nostalgia as an answer.

And here she thought Kyric had never spent a day apart from his war hero father. Burdened with legacy, sure, but cradled in virtue and presented with every opportunity to choose the Light as if the footsteps had been expertly laid out for him. How shamefully wrong she'd been.

Her hand reached, tentative against the warped doorway as she considered the place. A drug den, evident in the way stale air and the ashes of narcotics seemed almost embedded into walls. An agonizing drumbeat from above had her head canting towards the ceiling a moment later and her body moving reflexively towards and up a staircase in the back. Another turn, another doorframe, another stab of intense emotion at the sight of him. Dark locks. Longer now and impossibly more untamed. Against the newly crafted muscle along his back and frame, it felt almost jarring--how alarmingly still he was in comparison. She imagined him so frequently as the Warrior- fluid, restless strength ready to defend at a moment's notice, that the contradiction hurt. In this light, his bronze skin took on a hushed breath, marbled and beautiful and aching.

Capris didn't speak.

Gentle steps took her closer. Close enough to stand and absorb the weight of what she was witnessing. Her throat tightened, eyes cast down at the woman and her bruises. Capris didn't breathe either, held hostage in her rage. The kind any woman would feel at the tragedy of another taken from the world in this way. She didn't know quite how to be soothing, or even if she could, but she breathed those blistering embers out and took a seat anyway. Despite the longing to, Capris didn't study his face or search his cerulean eye for answers. All she did--after a heavy prolonged stillness--was rest her head against his shoulder, straight hair watering down his back.

He felt every bit as strong and stable as she knew him to be, even while grief twisted and roved through his body.

Another moment passed before she asked, "What was her name?"

Kyric

 

[Kyric]

Kyric should've known it was his turn to face these unforgotten tragedies. He really should've. But he misjudged the last and assumed Capris brought forth her torment via guilt—a guilt that slithered about her chest and coiled tight around her heart like a ravenous serpent. She carried it since last they parted on Coruscant two long years ago. And no matter when, where, or how they connected, Kyric felt it in the faint tremble of her words. He saw it staring back at him through her beautiful brown eyes.

He now understood—at least subconsciously—there was more at work with these dreams.

Yet, Kyric couldn't tear his eye away from his mother. Nor could he pull away from the morbid task of preparing her corpse a second time.

When Capris quietly padded into the room, he raised his head a tinge, as if he could still see her through the ruined socket. He wanted now more than ever to take her into his arms; to sink into her warmth where he knew safety awaited him. But his mother's ruined frame demanded his attention. For all she sacrificed for Kyric and his sister, he owed her that.

The soft weight of Capris' head settled on his shoulder as Kyric brushed scarred fingers through his mother's hair. Every movement he made was measured. The expression he wore was a cross between gut-wrenching pain and inexplicable fear.

A fear Kyric felt not for Capris or his mother, but for himself. He sought an explanation for all this; to try and tell his other-half none of this was real. Whatever mask she created and plastered over the kiffar's face was preferable to the truth of the inherent weakness which plagued him all throughout his life.

If not for Ryv, Kyric wouldn't matter; the strength he inherited from the Sword came far too late to ever be the difference.

The kiffar closed his eye and moved to the next patch of knots.

Capris' question halted his movements.

"Gwynevere," Kyric answered; his voice tinged in grief "Named fer the color o' her skin 'n' hair my pa used to say. Somethin' to do with albinism on her homeworld."

Kyric's fingers began their work anew. He unwound his mother's tightly coiled curls where he could, but there was little to be done in a single sitting. She rarely bothered with her hair even before her spiral.

"Thankfully, my sister was too young to deal with any of this crap. Only thing she remembers was the song ma used to sing to us before she'd disappear into this chithole."

---

Tags: Capris Halcyon

 

[Capris Halcyon]

His voice worked at some notch in her chest until she could almost feel the agony hemorrhaging. It didn't stand alone— grief never did. But Capris hadn't expected fear to be what twisted the knife further. For a second she imagined it was directed at her—that she might leverage this moment and every perceived vulnerability it offered up against him. Not the wildest assumption to make given their history, but it still stung to consider.

But no, that wasn't the case.

Her head shifted as if to get a better look at him, a furrow to her brow that softened with time. More than anything she wanted to squeeze away his pain, but intensity wasn't the answer here. All this dream had done was expose her naivety and dry her tongue of excuses. The odds weren't stacked in his favor, nor had they ever been. His choices had been his own, not some divine manipulation on the part of his father or cosmic destiny. She regarded the woman. Gwynevere. Considering, despite the fact they'd never met, just how much she owed her for the life that had become intertwined with her own.

"Kyric. You may have inherited your path in life from your father, but your strength, your real strength, came from people like her." She murmured with a gentleness she didn't realize she was capable of. The kind she was only slowly learning to fit into because of him. "That need to protect and defend and right every wrong in this damned universe? It's why I'm here now and not sulking to death in some dive bar."

"You'll never be your father," She said simply. Honestly. "And you should be grateful for that."

She certainly was. What she knew of Ryv Karis amounted to grand sacrifice, the kind that left his son stranded under the weight. Selfish or not she hoped if the time ever came to it, Kyric would never be that duty-bound.

She wouldn't know how to sheath her claws if he was.

"It gives you the chance to be something else. Something more in a lot of ways. Ryv didn't sacrifice himself for you to turn out exactly like him."

She returned her head to the curve of his neck looking, as he did, down at his mother.

"I'm sorry she's not here to see you now. Despite whatever tiny voice in your head is telling you otherwise, I know she'd be proud. They both would."

Kyric

 

[Kyric]

"I don't know how to be anythin' else, Capris," Kyric spoke slowly; his every syllable measured in a blatant effort to keep his voice steady. "I've tried to walk every path I could stomach to avoid this one. I promised my dad I wouldn't be like him; that I'd find my own way, but it ain't workin'."

He lifted his hands and willed the illusion away. The scars that covered his right arm were uneven fissures formed when Creuat's force destruction nearly ripped him apart on Coruscant. Two years had passed since Kyric received them, but they still flared with fresh pain regularly, as if the battle took place hours before. His opposite arm sported a long, thin scar that ran from the center of his palm to underneath the sleeve halfway down the kiffar's bicep. Every few inches, another scar crossed over it, with four tiny pinpricks of white where his skin was peeled back and pinned down.

"There's this sickness festerin' inside my heart no different than my father's."

Memories of the scalpel carving through his skin surfaced clearly in Kyric's mind. He watched Solipsis' torturers pull him apart and put him back together a hundred times over. His only reprieve found in the dark nights buried away from the world, where the Emperor's Elite subjected him to endless nightmares forged in the bloodcurdling screams of the family the Jedi Knight failed to protect.

"When I envision the end of my life, it ain't pretty. I've seen whispers of what's waitin' for me. A bloodstained blade—my blade—shattered to pieces. I'm alone like my father was. Everythin' I ever loved driven into me like daggers; twisted until I scream."

Tears streamed down his cheeks, then. Blood oozed from his ruined socket and fell to his mother's body like a crimson rain; staining her stark hair scarlet no differently than the rose his father touched in his final moments.

"I know why you're scared of me—why you hate me," Kyric struggled to breathe. His entire body trembled under the weight of a grief so heavy it bowed his shoulders and strained each word. "The people closest to me always end up like this."

He placed his hand atop his mother's temple and gently stroked her sunken brow.

"I just- I don't want that for you. I don't want it for anyone," Kyric bit back a sob and shook his head. "Better I die a martyr than live long enough to take y'all with me."

---

Tags: Capris Halcyon

 

[Capris Halcyon]

Capris didn't flinch, tawny eyes settling on his form–the one cracked and smoked through by innumerable scars. It was a fitting picture to the grief he carried. A pallbearer for an ancestry he never asked for. One that bent his spirit and spine under the weight. And suddenly he appeared to be exactly what he was. A kid. In a galaxy which never considered that to be a caveat to stop its onslaught on abuses.

Something firm took hold in her chest, and instead of softening in pity her eyes took on a glint. Certain as hell fire.

"Stop." This was his fear manifest. Deep, bleeding hurt that touched every corner of this fucked dream they shared. She took a hold of his wrist with a grip she hoped would anchor him. Take him away, if for a brief moment, from the feedback loop of trauma gouging through his memory. "You're digging your own grave here. You're not damned Kyric, you're just a survivor bleeding through old scars."

Scars she had a hand in creating, lest she forget.

"I'm not scared of you, or the hurt you carry." Her hand unclasped from his, moving to gently hold the bloody half of his face. Ribbons fell, red against a tan arm. "But right now? I'm scared I might lose you to it." Despite the faux confidence, her heart still beat a fierce drum of momentum. Enough to carry her hand up to cradle his head, and her lips to brush against his forehead. A kiss. Gentle and holding so much unspoken emotion.

"There's nothing noble in forcing me to bury you." It was whispered, like the thought of his death wrapped around the planes of her throat. "If you honestly think that I of all people would be better off without you–martyr or not, you might genuinely have lost your mind. "

"And preferably one of us needs to stay sane."

Kyric

 

[Kyric]

Capris' touch sent sparks racing down Kyric's spine. He felt a wave of goosebumps wash over his body and scour away the iron-grip that was his greatest fears made manifest. The sight of his mother served as the catalyst for all this pain; a reminder of the kiffar's greatest failure.

One that never truly belonged to him in the first place.

Gwynevere was a victim of circumstance. Born within the worst stretch of neighborhoods on Denon, she scarcely had a chance to begin with. Her introduction to a den of debauchery such as the one that painted the vivid scene did her no favors. Kyric knew that once. Ryv repeated it to his son in the dark hours of the night, when he screamed himself awake, throat raw from the vile images that raced through his dreams time and time again.

When did Kyric lose the certainty imparted to him by his father's gentle hand and watchful gaze?

How many times had Kyric's siblings dragged him away from the edge before his father marched back into the kiffar's life? How many battles had he fought—and won—to provide for them when no one else would?

"I'm sorry," he said, his voice softer than a whisper. He leaned into her kiss and closed his remaining eye. "I promised I'd be there to protect you, but yer the one protectin' me, huh?"

Kyric slipped his hands around her one. "Its hard to imagine a world where my bein' in it makes it a better place. My failures come to mind more than anythin' else, like I'm some walkin' talkin' joke. But the thought of you wantin' me to stick around warms my heart."

He lifted his head and blinked away the tears with little trouble. His face flared red the longer he stared at Capris, but he couldn't look away. No matter how many times the kiffar studied her, he always found something new—something beautiful—to recall when next the darkness swept over him. This time it was the little scar etched across her eye. The way it shifted and furrowed when she tried to bite back the beginnings of her faint smile brought a broad grin to Kyric's face.

"What more could one man ask fer?" He mused with a sudden serenity. "When yer ready, Capris, I'll be waitin' fer you on Naboo. With a big ol' vineyard and a home so cozy you'll never want to leave."

The promise of safety felt right—better than one of protection.

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Tags: Capris Halcyon