Mirrors.

[Sarge Potteiger]

Naboo​

Lake Country​

844 ABY​

​

Lake Country was, in a word, pristine. Thick patches of wild, green grass, winding rivers and crashing waterfalls. And, of course, the crystal clear lakes that gave the area its name. Two hours by heavy speeder to Theed wasn't bad, all told. A quick one could make it in an hour or so, should the pilot not be afraid to go max speed. Not that many people were reluctant to let a speeder gun its engines.

But it was the verdant beauty that had caused him to purchase a home here the first opportunity he got. And due to the surprisingly sparse population, the invasion had left it entirely untouched. No strategic or tactical value. Just some expensive home and farmers you could list on a single page of flimsi. Perhaps an understatement, but a fair assessment. That had been the funny thing about him purchasing the home, however.

The Protectorate had rolled through, helping the Queen establish herself. And in that time, not a single soul had seen the Sergeant. Not until he'd appeared at the final curtain, casting his judgement upon the nobles below. But that same, enigmatic man now found himself sat at the piano he kept in the living area of his palatial home, fingers working their way across the keys like they were old friends.

He could count on one hand the number of people who knew he could play an instrument. Coryth was one, and the other... well, Ysanae lived with him. He doubted she would figure him the sort to keep an instrument around that wasn't going to be used; even if he wasn't here often to use it. But the melodic sounds of the piano often calmed him. Took him to another place.

His grandmother, when he was young, had often tried teaching him how to play. But just because you were lead to water didn't mean you would drink. And so he hadn't.

He'd regretted not learning, and when he'd met Anara he'd asked her to teach him.

Perhaps as a service to the long dead matron he'd cared so much about. Still, he liked to sit here, close his eyes, and let the sharp sounds echo from the walls and bounce back upon him. Music was his soul. An emotional release valve he'd otherwise not have. When you kept everything bottled up, the pressure built, and you had to find your releases in healthy ways.

His violence had been easy to handle. It was the rest of his emotions that had often troubled him. Never one to cry, he allowed himself that luxury only within his own mind as soft, sorrow filled notes cascaded down upon him.

There was just something innately calming about feeling his sock covered feet rhythmically depressing the brass pedals of the grand piano, a serenity in feeling his hands shift and move. The pressure of pad on key was exhilarating on an instinctual level with him. It was at the exact moment the ivory struck bottom that a bit of emotional release was leveraged, allowing long sought peace to dance across his features if only for the duration of the piece.

But even as he slowed, paused, unsure how to continue, he was interrupted by a thick, mottled beast jumping up onto the bench. The bloodwolf had been secured by Danger - an orphan, its parents killed. Not by the Queen, of course. Still, Ashai had adapted decently well to being domesticated, aside from the gargantuan canines she sported. He often wondered just how thick metal would have to be for them to not penetrate.

A sobering through, really, even as he threaded his fingers through the thick, coarse fur. "Heya, old girl." She was heavy, too, considering she came up to his waist. But she behaved, mostly, and enjoyed a good swim outside when he went.

Yeah, this was good for him. A home. Some solitude. A companion. He could live without the fur on his turtleneck though, but... ah well, the price he paid for an animal. "Let's go for a walk." She didn't move until he started to stand, and he slipped on some shoes as he stepped out and onto the balcony, glass door closing behind him. The lake stretched out before him, sun painfully bright in reflection. Covering his eyes with a raised hand, he looked as Ashai bounded down the wooden stairs and made for waters edge. Something told him he'd be soaked too before long.

She had a bad habit of shaking herself dry near him.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

Nebulon-B Andromedan​

421 ABY​

​

"Wrong frequency, sweetie."

Sarge snorted. "That's what you think." He sub-vocalizes, the giggle from the other end telling him all he needed to know about Abbi's reaction. A hand rose, adjusting the comm unit in his ear as he gave a warning look to the other Rebels around him. The Sergeant was one of the young ones, only 20. But the Alliance routinely suffered large losses, especially in the wake of Alderaan.

They'd been absolutely crushed there.

Casualties made billets, which meant field promotions often turned to permanent ones. He'd survived, so here he was. Not that it meant much right now as they walked over grated decking, weapons in hand. They were old solid shot weapons, not the kind he preferred. Blasters were all around better, but the ship was old. Real old. The power of a blaster might cause some rather... explosive decompression.

Or so he'd been told.

Secretly? Well, secretly he thought they just didn't have anything better. At least the thing had an ammo counter on the side. Little red numbers, counting down, bullet by bullet. Each ticking digit marked another second closer to death. They were here clearing out Sithspawn. A particularly nasty individual known as Disciple had unleashed torrents of them upon the Mandalorians, and they were even now located on abandoned ships.

Ships the Alliance needed for itself.

Which is why they'd given him this stupid motion detector that kept making loud pinging noises every time something set it off. Stupid metal reduced its effective range to less than twenty meters and even then it only gave you a general direction and heading. A little blue blip, moving across the screen between pings. Forward. Sideways. Back. Didn't matter. That's as good as you were gonna get.

So there they moved, Sarge on point. But, of course, that was a new nickname. A young, fresh faced Sergeant. Boyish of features, bright of eyes and smile. Genial was a word oft-used to describe him. Happy. Joking. Just like his squad. "Hey, I heard that snicker back there Blud." There was a louder snicker at that, followed by a retort. "Zeltron getting the best of you, Sarge?"

Sarge snorted, looking down to the squarish tracker he held in his left hand. His rifle was in his right, barrel pointed at the ceiling and held onto his armor by a strap. A strap that was now caught on the rolled up sleeve of his undershirt. He grunted, getting everything back into place. "Never, Blud. Never." And there it came again. That pinging. That incesse- Aww, kark.

"Multiple contacts. Front. Ten meters." The squad stopped, weapons coming up. A soldier at the back with a rotary blaster cannon - slightly powered down - began tracking the multi-barreled weapon across their six. Each ping brought the blips closer, and nervous hands began panning weapons across the grating on the floor and across vent openings in the ceilings. Enclosed corridor.

Tight.

Multiple entrances above and below. No maneuver room. They were all in each others fields of fire, no matter what they did. "Six meters." And just like that, the blips disappeared. Which did more to unsettle the squad than the actual blips themselves. They were all on edge. Most of them were barely out of their teens. This was not a mission for kids, but that's who had gotten sent.

Lowering his weapon so the barrel was pointed forward, he panned the scanner around. It only worked in a roughly 110 degree arc in front of them. Which meant there was a whole lot of everything left uncovered by a tracker. That meant eyes and ears. Ears that heard scraping. Hissing. Chittering. "Anyone got visual....?" There was no hiding the wavering in his voice. He'd seen this holo.

He knew how it ended.

They'd all be mangled corpses on the ground for the next party to search and pick through. Blood would be splattered across the walls, severed limbs haphazardly discarded where they'd fallen after being cloven off from a torso.

"No, Sarge."

"Negative."

"Nothing."

"Six clear."

There was a long pause as Sarge panned his head to look behind him. "Blud...?" And where the Private had been standing was only an empty void. A vent, no cover nearby, stood open next to the position. A trap.

Sarge felt the heavy, traitorous beating of his heart loud in his chest. Blood was pounding in his ears. Fear gripped his chest, icy and tempting his mind with thoughts of turning tail. Blud hadn't covered the obvious entrance. Not his fault.

Yeah. Not his fault. That was right. Nothing he could do. No way to save Blud now.

He hadn't even made a noise.

Sarge was, without a doubt, scared absolutely chitless. He didn't even have trigger discipline anymore, he was just waiting for something to pop out and scare him. But nothing moved. Didn't even matter where he panned the motion tracker. They were alone.

They'd survived. For now, at least.

"Abbi." He breathes, looking back down the corridor to a very terrified looking squad. "Only one way to go, boys..." With a forlorn look and fortitude born of sheer terror, he put one booted foot in front of the other and headed deeper into the bowels of the beast on legs that threatened to give out with every step.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

Corellia​

Coronet​

Shortly before the Rapture​

​

An inauspicious night, truly. That was what his life had become. Quiet, repetitive nights in. It had been broken up by a brief conversation and dinner with Anaya Fen, a Sith who he'd never quite viewed as a Sith. She'd gotten him the information on Cira to great personal cost, and had, in the manner so befitting the women in his life, entirely and utterly baffled him in the aftermath.

She'd told him he'd owe her. He had accepted that debt.

But in her mind, a woman's mind, that wasn't the point. Apparently the point had been to show he cared about her sacrifice. That didn't really... compute. So he had instead simply filed away that he'd still owed her one and come home. An inauspicious night. Come in, brush his teeth, strip down. Find woman in his bed.

Actually that last one wasn't normal. Not anymore. He'd committed himself fully to Cira when she'd become back from being dead and had done so without so much as a conscious thought. It hadn't been until he'd been celibate some time that the realization had dawned on him. He wasn't wasting any more time, either his or someone else's. There was just he and Cira.

He'd gone deep into a Hell for her, and had done little to fight her in the process. So many dead. And that was all that was on his mind as he'd crawled into bed, content on believing that this was another hallucination brought about by extreme stress. But even as he'd gone to bed and curled up with the woman wearing his shirt, he'd realized then it wasn't a hallucination. His mind couldn't fake those eyes.

No, those were hers.

And somehow, she'd wound up running from him at the hospital only to crash at his place. A sanctuary for her, perhaps. At the very least the closest one. But as the sun came in across tousled slate sheets, heat coming to rest upon the back of a dark haired, bearded man wrapped around a feminine form, he'd realized that the night hadn't been a fevered dream. The heat of her mouth, the need of her hands. All of it had been real.

So painfully real.

Perhaps that's why a sleepy, tired man lifted a palm to caress along the outside of a sculpted thigh. Perhaps that's why that same exhausted man pressed a gentle, tender kiss to the back of a dreadlocked head, even as he extracted himself from the mess that was his covers and made for the bathroom. He felt disgusting. Everything had dried, and he knew he'd need to wash those sheets sooner rather than later.

But even as he turned on the luxury that was his water shower, he founded himself staring in the mirror at eyes every bit as distant as the night sky and set below a furrowed brow of confusion. Was this what he'd waited for all this time?

Was this the happily ever after? Or would she be gone by the time he finished cleaning himself up?

A hand rose, running back through his dark hair that was haphazardly arranged from a combination of pillow and a woman's possessive grip. A shaky breath parted his lips, even as he closed his eyes and stepped under the streaming, scalding water. Would that water could wash away his doubts, sure as Blud had been whisked away into the night without a sound.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

I was thinking about her.

And there came the deluge, water slicking down his hair, long brown strands sticking down to his forehead. One palm was pressed to the wall of the shower, the other reaching up to smooth back the hair despite the aggressive insistence by the streaming water that his hair stay pressed downward. He craned his neck forward, allowing the water to hit it and part around the trunk. A river parting before a great stone.

A slow, quiet breath parted his lips.

An exhalation. Of what, he didn't know.

I was thinking 'bout me.

And that's what this all came down to, didn't it? He stretched his chest, pushing his shoulderblades back towards each other. Muscle moved beneath skin, and he could feel the hard fibers pushing against his flesh, making room for their contractions and expansions. Normally, that would calm him. Please him. Today, it didn't. He felt so cold. The hand that had smoothed his hair descended, turning the heat up a notch further.

Steam began to rise around him. He closed his eyes.

Drawing in a breath of heated, moistened air, he briefly stared a hole in the wall before him. The palm on the wall shifted, forearm coming to rest against the surface so he could press his forehead to it. Twin voids disappeared behind tired lids again, scalding water marking his back and neck an angry, belligerent red.

I was thinkin' 'bout us, what we're gonna be.​

​

Without realizing it, his heart rate spiked. His breath became quick, harried. He was running from himself now. Running from his own mind. It didn't register that he was doing so. He was retracted into a world of quiet solitude and thoughts that swirled like a tornado across a plain. Everything was swept up in its path, the vengeful maelstrom leaving nothing to chance as its destructive grasp plucked thought and reason from his mind in equal measure.

His eyes opened slowly, and he forced his breath to slow. This was unlike him. This shouldn't have happened. Why was he the one so confused after all this? This was a woman's job, to dig into sex and tear it apart, searching for meaning that wasn't there. Was there meaning? Wasn't there? His breathing spiked again.

A calming breath was drawn in, expanding his scarred and battered chest.

And that's when it hit him. This wasn't a game he was playing, anymore. There was no insulation from the outcomes of this, whatever this was or wasn't. No, he'd handed over control to the woman in the bed. That scared him. That struck deep. It chilled his stomach, the cold claw that was apprehension reaching up to snare his insides and wrench them around. This wasn't a game he was playing.

This was a game they were playing.

Closing his eyes, shuddering breath shaking his body as it was released... a hand lowered again, and the heat increased.

Pain would wash the fear away. Pain was clarity. Pain was good. Let the heat soak in, let the weakness flood out. But try as hard as he might, he couldn't still the rampant patter of his heart, threatening to burst from his chest at any moment.

 

[Cira]

Sometimes when really bad things happen, you put them in a box and never look at them again because they'll cost you the rest of your life. Some wounds never heal. You excise the savaged flesh and become the next thing.

The next best thing.

Or was it in truth, the one you were all along?

Where does one truth start? End?

I frown.

Morning smiled through the panes of the glasteel windows. One would say like a child, innocent and unknowing. The bed is naught but a ghost of a memory of tangled sheets, sweat slick skin, and a cry of an assertion of life. Was it surrender? Or was it a search for safe haven?

The length of bedsheet would tighten around my torso, an unconscious need to find shelter. A shelter that was saturated in the scent of him. Of evergreen and distilled male strength tangled in the aroma of my own musk.

A fine tremble came then, running down my spine like ice and prompting the tiny hairs on my arms to rise. A sudden desire to hide, to run came over me, prompting the inching of my feet to slide back further into the shadows. Those were familiar. Comforting even. The rays of welcoming light would drift past my body, shining upon the spot I had stood in front of the window moments prior.

Yet the fear would linger. Fear of the unknown. Of what who I am. Of what this meant. Of him. Me.

The long lengths of insectoid dreads would tickle my cheeks, a cold reminder. A brand. A guilt. A dark familiarity. Lifting my lids, twin orbs of gold would catch the gaze of another. A woman. Her face was angular; pale. Her cheeks were slightly sunken, a dark past cast in a notable thinness of her face. It made the bright burnished gold of her eyes almost ethereal, thick fringe of her lashes framing almost too large eyes set upon that face.

Her face.

Mine.

Or was it?

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

He couldn't see anything but rising steam. Felt nothing but pounding, oppressive, scarring heat. Stupid knob wouldn't turn any further. The pain wasn't gone. His mind was still racing. And then, all of a sudden, some of the tension seemed to release. The mere realization that he was being a complete and utter fool was enough to sober him somewhat. Taking a step back, he let the scalding water run down his ruined chest.

A hand rose, palm running a path over his pectorals, a path not dissimilar to one her hand had made last night. His eyes closed, his features fell.

She wasn't his. Not anymore.

But she had been, once. Though she had tried to fight it.

He never let her run away for good, though. Like a hook he just kept bringing her back. Was she even still out there?

The morning brought light to more than just the world. It brought illumination to your life, giving you a clarity you had lacked in the darkness of the night before. Or, in this case, in the arms of someone you had never let inside in any manner.

With careful slowness at odds with his usual quick showers, he began cleaning himself slowly, wondering if he took long if she'd come in and join him. She'd leave, though. She'd wake, not like what she saw... and leave.

And he would alone, with naught but the taste of her lips lingering on his tongue and the memory of her impassioned need to remind him of what they could have had. Should have had.

Could still have.

While he couldn't transmit or receive telepathically, he could still sense. Reaching out, he checked to see if she were still there. He needed to know if she was. They both knew that what she did this time would be it. This would be their future.

He sincerely hoped that wasn't true.

[member="Cira"]

 

[Cira]

Cira was trembling, trying to conceal it.

But there was no concealing the reflection in the mirror. A fist would clench, nails biting into her palm in bloody crescents. Thoughts would abound. Far too many to make sense.

A flare of gold flashes deep in her eyes. What was it? Something very different from what 'Cira' would show on the surface. The rays of the approaching dawn would filter closer to her, illuminating her with the kiss of rose and muted orange hues.

Panic rose. As did uncertainty.

Feet would stumble back, out of that warming light much like vermin would skitter from view. Her back would crash against the wall, a half stumble that would bring the crash of a book to the floor, her thigh having bumped against the bedstand. It feel with a loud thud, echoing within the silence of the room and the thrum of the shower. Her heart thundered at her throat, and she gave a grimace.

What is wrong with me?

Her gaze would fall towards her balled fist, watching the strain of her knuckles, the tension in her arms. Brief flashes of memories would paint them a different hue. Shape the digits longer, with talons that would cut flesh and bone.

Zhaera.

Another grimace. Another wince. The shift of the Force of extended senses pushing out; probing. Sensing.

Her eyes immediately went snapping up towards the direction of the refresher. Him. Me.

Us.

He was there. He was here. No. Around her. Always. A constant. Other images would replace far darker ones; tangled sheets and limbs. She can recall his energy; sexual, electric. All of a sudden every cell in her body comes alive. It always did when he was near. She never expressed it, but her need for him was directly proportionate to how much emotion she would repress; and she had been repressing violently for years.

Funny how that went.

As Cira she would let almost nothing show. Until he took her in his arms. The memory was vivid; picture perfect clarity. How she had exploded. How she had vent the fire, fury and need of everything she felt on him and how he blew it right back, a hot and dangerous sirocco that would level and reshape. That would bind them into a place where that bit of her soul she knew would get lost in sex and leave it there for the taking.

Leaving her torn between staying or running.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

In the moments before he felt her, he heard the sound he least expected to hear; something thudding onto the floor. Not her. She was there, just... not on the floor. Rather, she must have run into a shelf, or knocked over a book.

The noise wasn't heavy enough for a weapon to have been shifted.

How uncharacteristic for the ever-careful woman. But the tune to an old, enjoyable song came to mind.

But your seat is set at the table... if you're able, to make yourself stay.

Inhaling, clean, steam-reddened skin standing out angrily, he turned off the refresher and began drying his hair and torso.

And it's there if you think you deserve to, but you prefer to remain a ghost. But didn't they all? That had been what had earned him a paycheck from the very woman now so startled in his bedroom. Or maybe not startled, just afraid.

He wasn't sure. He saw emotion with his eyes, not the Force. Cause if you decide... you have to decide.

The drying had been hurried, not wanting to let her leave, but more importantly, he didn't want her to fear. He would calm seas for her, level a world, all to hold her in his arms again. Obsessed? Surely. But that's what happened when you realized that the pain of being without was far stronger than anticipated.

That was when you knew what you wanted, in that split moment between leaving and going. Which hurt more? It was the absence. Always the absence. He couldn't be himself without her. How strange a thought that was.

The towel wrapped around his waist, and a rough palm slide open the refresher door. "You feel like a pauper in a palace." He says to the woman quietly, tired eyes boring into her with that same, infuriating understanding that had so vexed her.

"Like a pretender to the throne." He adds, repeating something he'd heard once. The voice was solid. Firm.

That didn't last long.

She had swept away all of his surety with her embrace, and in doing so had done what no one before her had done. She had laid him low. He asceded to her whims, now. She had the power. That dark brow softened, eyebrows curving downward to match the sorrow in his eyes.

When he spoke again, standing there in the doorway, he did so with a voice born of the surety of the person he was speaking to. It was almost plaintive, both invitation and query for a blessing only she could bestow. Fear? Never. Not with him around.

But he knew, as ever, when he was crossing a line.

A hand twitched, clenched, mind trying to will it to raise and beckon her over, but it didn't. Nor did he cross the room to embrace her as he so desired to do. Rather, he did the one thing he had never done.

He deferred to her.

"Stay?" A question.

A true, honest, query that was no longer a statement. He was not telling her he wanted her to stay, or that she wanted to but wouldn't.

Rather, he wanted her to stay... but was going to give her the space to say no. To take that power back into her hands.

A power she needed. A confidence she needed. He still trusted her to make decisions. He wasn't going anywhere...

Was she?

 

[Cira]

Sarge watches her in silence, eyes dark, unfathomable.

He's silent so long that Cira finally glances warily up to find him regarding her with an expression women have been on the receiving end of since time immemorial, as if she's a species he just cannot fathom.

Then he talks.

Commentary. Then he says the next word aloud and there is a gentleness about them that undoes her.

"Stay."

She melts at that. There is something about the way he says the word that makes it seem he's said a thousand and they all make her glow. But in that also comes the fear. The insecurity.

And she can't hide it.

Gold eyes drop, their glow falling into her fist. She slowly uncurled the slender digits, then curled them again. A tick. In her mind, they were still claws. Elongated into sharp talons that would rip -- no had ripped and torn flesh, sinew, and bone.

That brought death.

"Takto?" her low voice was a husky shadow of 'Cira', the Lord Protector. It was throatier, the accent a bit more pronounced as she shifted into Anselmian. "Neexistuje žiadna istota, na koho ste pozvať na pobyt."

Her face was cast in shadows and muted rays of sun from the approaching dawn, those thick insecticoide dreads flanking her heartshaped face, almost half hidden within their heavy plaits.

Her fingers would extend again, long slender digits flexing. There was a thought, and as she kept talking, her fingers seemed to get longer.

"Ste si istí, že chcete, aby som?"

Was it an illusion of the light? Yet as her fingernails grew longer, tinted into black and curved as the skin and bone would shift and move, it was clear that it wasn't. She was skinshifting her arm into an exact replica of the clawed hand of the Hydra Queen she had burned in her mind.

Twin bright coals of ember with an almost ethereal light would lift to sink into the dark void of the eyes boring into hers, staring at him as she speaks aloud the words that had been drowning in since she awoke.

"To ja?"

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

All she would find was the inscrutable pools of midnight that so often lingered upon her voluptuous frame. She surrounded him, her movements were in his every waking thought. The length of her stride, the faint lift of her chin, the husky timbre of her voice. A balm to his wounded, aching heart. Where she saw death, regret and anguish, he saw only perfection. That was the funny thing about this; what she hated, he loved.

She saw regret.

And he saw it too.

But to her regret meant she had done something wrong, something worth shame and unhappiness. To him, by now, regret meant you had either lived, or done something you had lived to want to take back. The latter was impossible. You could not turn back the hands of time. But regret meant something else, and that's what he homed in on. Regret meant you didn't want to do it again.

That with all your power you would not let it happen again if you were able. And so where she saw failure, he saw a lesson learned. What that lesson was, perhaps they wouldn't know for some time.

As he had done before, he said little, but in the exact moment her eyes had met his she'd see it - his heart lodged in his throat, skipping a beat in the same moment his lungs forgot how to draw in vital air. In the next instant, he was back to normal, blinking at her amber orbs even as she changed her hand. He didn't look.

Instead, making sure his towel was secure, he crossed the room towards her. Slowly. Carefully. Cautiously. Giving her time to adjust to him moving into her bubble. And once he did, he took a grip on her wrists with his calloused palms. Eyes always on hers, he pulled her towards the window which was already polarizing against the incoming sun. He turned her towards it, wrapping her arms around her stomach with his own atop them.

Without a word, he settled his chin atop her head. "A new day, Cira." He says quietly, not responding to her remarks directly. "Every day, people get up, yawn, and realize today is another day. Another day to go to work, or call in sick. To comm a friend, or prepare for a vacation. A day to learn, or forget. A day to drown in the past, or build towards the future." His tone was low, baritone rumbling so close to her.

His arms pulled tighter around her, bringing her back more firmly against the marred patchwork that was his chest. Warmth suffused his body as she drew close, her simple presence enough to draw out passion and desire just with vicinity. But he didn't act. He simply stood there, staring into the window but also staring into her eyes. "And every day, we come to the realization that we cannot change the past."

Those eyes dropped a little, and he felt his chin rub into her tresses as if attempting to bring himself closer to her. "A decade down the road, Cira, and you still have to ask if I want you to stay.

When every morning I wake up hoping that the day will be like today. With you in the bed, body close by, words nearer still. And that hope carries on, so that on a day like today, a decade from where we stood in a skyscraper, your hand around my throat... I can look at you and say 'I love you,' and in the process... teach you how to love yourself."

[member="Cira"]